Hello Jrock81, welcome to Vista forums!

Yes, UAC is a vital part of system security in Vista and you leave your laptop open to random infection from the internet, as it disables "Protected Mode" in IE. It will also slow down Vista performance when left disabled.







Later Ted

I dont understand why you would need to disable UAC, but it really should be turned back on.

Originally Posted by sidewinder

Originally Posted by Bare Foot Kid

It [disabling UAC] will also slow down Vista performance when left disabled.

How?

S-

The UAC Visualization driver is left enabled even if you disable UAC and it 'Waits' for the Integrity-Level (IL) check from the kernel, All programs and services also 'wait" for this IL check and only proceed after timing out, Its the down-side to UAC developed programs and having UAC disabled.

UAC has really good security features not found in previous operating systems, refer to this topic for more information Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Steven

Originally Posted by dmex

The UAC Visualization driver is left enabled even if you disable UAC and it 'Waits' for the Integrity-Level (IL) check from the kernel, All programs and services also 'wait" for this IL check and only proceed after timing out, Its the down-side to UAC developed programs and having UAC disabled.

UAC has really good security features not found in previous operating systems, refer to this topic for more information Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

I don't need a refresher on the advantages, for some anyway, of UAC.

I wanted to understand how disabling UAC would affect performance. I run as an administrator with UAC turned off and I NEVER see any delays. How do these delays manifest themselves? Do they affect "Standard User" and "Administrator" account types or only "Standard User" accounts.

Where can I read about these delays? I have done a cursory search on Google and found nothing.

S-

Also, based on what I have been to reading everywhere and from what I have experienced, disabling UAC has the same effect as clicking on "Allow" when the UAC box pops up. Based on that, how can there be a performance slow down?

S-

Maybe I see no delays because I have UAC enabled but set to "Elevate without Prompting".

Regardless, please point me to a technical document that explains these delays...

S-

Originally Posted by sidewinder

Does anyone have technical information to backup the assertion that disabling UAC will slow down Vista? Or is this just something somebody heard and passes along as fact? Where are the details? Why is this not common knowledge and why is this not reported as an issue all over the Internet by people who have turned off UAC?

Its not a issue for everyone with superfast computers, some do have this problem while others dont...Its also just something most people dont care about since they never check there Performance logs (Event_Viewer\Applications & Services Logs\Microsoft\Windows\Diagnostics-Performance\Operational) You can see the time takes to boot drivers and services from there,

I dont disable UAC so I dont know if this problem still exists, I think it was partially fixed for 85% of users not using UAC when ServicePack1 was released this year...

Find out for yourself, just look at the Performance Log boot times with UAC enabled over a few days then do the same with it turned off and compare the average boot time...You will find it boots faster with UAC enabled.

This is the original article I read a few months ago just before SP1 was released...Chris123NT is a highly respected Microsoft MVP
Chris123NT’s Blog » Publications » Vista’s UAC Failing Once Again

How long is this Integrity-Level (IL) check timeout? Can it be adjusted?

The timeout is about 0-5 seconds when It doesn't get a IL-Check response with UAC disabled but it depends all on your hardware and current CPU utilization... When UAC is enabled that time is infinite since you have to authorize the prompt or enter a password to continue...It cant be adjusted because its hard-coded into the Kernel but if your not maxing your CPU utilization its absolutely nothing to worry about