Vista Tips and Tricks for User Account Control

User Accounts Prompts is one issue that seems to plague many users.  For those that share computers, User Accounts is a feature that makes computer use easy to organize between various users.  If you are the sole user on your PC, you can turn off the prompts from User Account Control and thus eliminate this distraction. Some people, even sole users of PC’s, keep it on, but many find the elevated prompts a nuisance.

To turn off your prompts from User Accounts Control, simply launch your Local Security Policy by entering the prompt “secpol.msc” in your Search bar.  Navigate through this series of prompts: Security Settings/Local Policies/ and ending at Security Options.  Here you will go to your far right pane, and scroll to the end where you will see  “User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation.”   At this point, all you need to do is disable this feature which will keep your User Accounts on, but will not barrage you with User Accounts elevated prompts.

You also may want to log on to your User Account Automatically, without having to manually log on every time you open your computer.  You can do this very easily by telling Vista this is what you want.  To bypass the login screen, follow these steps.  Click on your Start Button, and enter the command “netplwiz” into your search box.  Here you will be given the Advanced User Accounts control panel.  Go to the “Users” tab, and you will see a prompt that says “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”.  All you have to do is uncheck this box, and then hit the “Apply” button.  The “Automatically Log On” Dialog box will appear next, and you simply have to enter your user and password information, and hit ‘OK”.  To finish the process, hit “OK” and you are now enabled to bypass the logon screen from here on out.

 More Windows Vista How To Articles avialable.