understands the old prevention/cure tenet bettter than most, which is why it has crammed Windows Vista full of new features designed to prevent many problems from ever occurring. One such precautionary element is Vista's User Account Control (UAC), which is basica1ly a warning message that freezes your screen. In general day-to-day use, it is something you may encounter only rarely. It's designed to spring into action only when potentially dangerous changes are about to be made to your computer; for example, .when certain system settings are accessed.



Usually, User Account Control will not prevent an action from being performed altogether, but you'll need to click 'Continue' to get past it or supply an administrative username and password if you're logged on with a Standard user account (see below). While User Account Control can be turned off, it is far from advisable. The Ensure your security settings are up to date very act of disabling the feature can sometimes have detrimental effects in its own right but, more importantly, switching UAC off could potentially leave your system open to abuse from malidous hackers.