I’ve been receiving a lot of email lately from Microsoft Windows XP users who are buying discounted Windows Vista computers now in order to get the free Windows 7 upgrade. Most of the questions revolve around how best to deal with Windows Vista’s User Account Control (UAC). As you know, going from XP to Vista and encountering UAC prompts for the first time can be very frustrating — especially if you consider yourself an experienced computer user who isn’t likely to fall into the kind of traps that UAC is designed to protect computer users from. As such, many of these users have permanently disabled UAC in order to avoid what they perceive to be a regular onslaught of “Are you sure?” type of prompts.
However, I recently discovered a technique that will allow you to temporarily disable UAC during those times when you know that you will be performing operations that generate a lot of UAC prompts and then re-enable UAC when you are done. That way you will be able to avoid UAC prompts when they are most likely to occur, yet leave the UAC protection in place when it will most likely save you from disaster.
In this edition of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I’ll explain this technique and show you how to use it to your advantage.
