I’ve disabled the User Access Control (UAC) in Windows 7 (because I like living on the edge).
I can’t recommend that for everyone, but I still think the UAC is a nuisance; especially since there isn’t any quick way to create a list of known programs that bypass the UAC (a white list).
Some people are working on programs that create a white list for the UAC and I tried the UAC Trust Shortcut but couldn’t get it to work.
There are a couple of ways apparently to manually create a white list for the UAC, including this multi-step process. This is another method using the task manager to do the same thing. (I haven’t tried either.)
One of the problems in disabling the User Access Control (UAC) in Windows 7 is that after doing so the sidebar and gadgets become inaccessible.
But there is a registry entry you can make to allow access to the gadgets with UAC off.
1. Open the Registry Editor, or regedit.exe. You can search for regedit in the Start Menu.
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSidebarSettings
3. Right-click and create a new DWORD (32-Bit) Value called AllowElevatedProcess.
4. Right-click AllowElevatedProcess and click Modify. Set the value to 1. Close the registry editor. Your gadgets should work with UAC off now.
There are plenty of websites documenting how to manually enter the registry fix as above, but I didn’t find any that included a registry (.reg) file to avoid having to go through the tedious process of navigating through the registry and making the entry manually.
So I created the file so that you can simply double click on the file and have the registry entry made for you.
Download the registry fix here.
(If you’re wary of downloading .reg files as well you should be, after downloading it simply right click on the file and select “Edit” and you can view the file, noting that it only contains the above entry.)
Make sure you make a registry backup (create a restore point) before you make the registry change!
