Web Development·12,052 discussions

How might I momentarily ‘disable UAC’ in Win7 64bit?

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It’s to allow a website’s software update to install. As soon as the installation is finished I want to re-enable it. Thanks in advance.

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Clarifications

In reply to How might I momentarily ‘disable UAC’ in Win7 64bit?

Clarifications

Don’t think you can.

In reply to How might I momentarily ‘disable UAC’ in Win7 64bit?

Hi hippiekarl,
Windows versions since XP are GUI-concentric in that nothing runs without the GUI. Unlike versions previous to these that could run -in varying degrees- minus the GUI. Even the CLI interface runs within a Windowed shell.

That said, there are a multitude of advanced user options available via the CLI to effect tweaks to the OS that are not available within the GUI. I make no claim of expertise in implementing most of these myself as they often require a bit of coding or scripting skill. An area I remain challenged in BTW. 🙂

Is there any possibility you could provide more details regarding your objective and the avenues you have taken thus far to achieve them? I ascribe generally to the “there must be a way” train of thought in this field and enjoy challenges such as these in implementing them. While my skills are far from advanced in that area, it brings out what is best about these forums. The collective synergy of the minds within them.

Waiting to see what one of my TR heroes has to say about this. Enter OH Smeg. 🙂

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Don’t think you can.

Yep; I was hoping for OH Smeg/HAL 9000 or wizard57m (both of whom are Q/A stars) to have an answer. I’ve been playing poker at CardPlayerPoker for some months (it’s organized in a fashion deeemed ‘legal’ in the US; no real-$ accounts, etc), and 2 weeks ago they revamped/expanded their software. The download/install doesn’t complete, and a window prompts me to ‘temporarily disable GUI’ for the install, and then turn it back on. This led me to assume that it was a simple process that thousands of users (with recent Windows machines) should be able to do. I haven’t figured out how, though, and I thought I’d ask my friends here at TR before I tried to bug Card Player Magazine (their parent operation) about it. Maybe they meant ‘active desktop’ or firewall, but they said ‘GUI’ (I thought that was ‘graphic user interface’, and don’t understand why it would need disabling to complete an install). Thanks for your interest, meanwhile, and I hope someone here can help shed more light on my issue.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to Don’t think you can.

OOPS! Brain-fart! It’s disable UAC, not GUI! I just changed it in my original question; maybe it makes some sense now(?)…

Now that the question makes sense(!),

In reply to How might I momentarily ‘disable UAC’ in Win7 64bit?

I did a search of TR articles on disabling UAC (of course they were 4 years old, for Vista), and, assuming Vista’s congruence w/7, I logged on as Admin. Before I could even start the registry workaround, I noticed the little ‘admin-shield’ in the program’s shortcut. Clicked it….and my software update finally did its installation. Ta-da! Thanks go to Schultz and Detweiller, plus SmartAceWOLF for his initial interest in my dilemma. BTW, the TR Dojo 2011 blooper-reel, I discovered, is attached to the end of–apparantly–ALL his archived videos (the one I watched was from 2009, I think, but it ran the out-takes after the credits).

turning off UAC

In reply to How might I momentarily ‘disable UAC’ in Win7 64bit?

start menu, search UAC (UAC will pop up), slide slider all the way to never…done 🙂 it was one of the first things i did when we installed 7 on our computers.

Reponse To Answer

In reply to turning off UAC

Thanks! Most of the comments below the archived articles were from folks who’d just left it off, and one noted that MS even admitted–get this–that the reason for the gratuitous prompts was ‘to annoy end-users’…and that was supposed to result in 3rd party software vendors ‘writing better code’! Not only *look who’s talking*, but it supposes that instead of being irritated at MS, users (customers) would bring some unknown pressure on software firms. Boycott Adobe?! Grass-roots letter-writing campaign?! That’s just bizzarre……

Reponse To Answer

In reply to turning off UAC

And here I remember speaking to one of the Vista Developers saying that something like the Root Access Prompt in Unix/Linux would be a great idea to prevent users accidentally installing something.

Of course they messed that up so badly that I’ve only ever touched 1 system with Vista on it after I did my initial testing and as yet no Business Machines running 7.

I have a 64 Bit Version of 7 dual booting on this machine and other than semi-regular AV Updates I don’t use it all that much. I have 1 customer a Surgeon who uses 7 and I only ever really boot into it when he has a problem.

As he [b]Blackmails[/b] me with a scalpel after making a incision and then hits me to do computer repairs I tend to do as he asks as I’ve yet to find a way to say no under those conditions.

See Skin Cancer really are a [b]Mental Health Hazard.[/b] :^0

Col

Reponse To Answer

In reply to turning off UAC

Thought I was getting senile there for a moment! (Not so sure even now) I kept looking at the UAC and thinking, I was sure that said GUI! Haha. Don’t do me like that hippiekarl! Used to be funny! At this age though, its serious business. 😀

On the subject of MS and their implementation of the Root Access Prompt in Unix/Linux, indeed MS dropped the ball there. Wonder how many sales were lost by Mcafee and Norton over that very practice?

Reponse To Answer

In reply to turning off UAC

Sorry, WOLF; it bespoke my impending senility—not yours (this time)! I was obligated to edit my initial question once I ‘Ah-ha’-ed my mistake, but it still read ‘GUI’ in my first response (so we could all see I was the idiot; not you). As there’s probably more to talk about on the underlying issue (MS’s decision to try annoying users into somehow affecting vendors’ code-quality, and how it’s turned out), I’ll try taking a poll at the ol’ Water Cooler….PurpleSkys seems to already advise ‘turn it off; leave it off’. I think I’ve even been asked by my own Win7 machine whether I ‘trusted Microsoft Corporation to make changes to my system’….Perhaps they’re too jaded to trust themselves, and aren’t certain whether I should, either…..

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