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if you're a Windows user you've probably seen that message pop up a fair number

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of times perhaps right when you're about to load up one of your favorite games

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web browsers or other programs but why does Windows insist on bothering

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you like this i mean you clicked on the program you obviously want it to run

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don't you well it turns out this is actually a

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rather important feature and i'm not talking about something microsoft wants

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you to think is important

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it's called user account control or uac

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and believe it or not it can save you a ton of headaches you see back in the

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days when we were running older versions of Windows up to and including xp the

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operating system would just run a program when the user asked it to

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and while this seems like the way things should be it was actually a massive

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security hole by default all programs were given

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privileges by Windows and i don't mean like

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a little bit of extra RAM for being well behaved but rather programs could

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essentially run whatever code they wanted after they were started

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now oftentimes this wouldn't cause any problems if an innocuous program like a

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word processor was behaving properly the issue is that this also meant that a

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poorly coded malfunctioning or even malicious program could cause serious

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problems by making changes to the operating system

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so starting with Windows vista microsoft took away privileges from programs that

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weren't an integral part of the os and started directly asking users if they

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wanted to allow a program to make any changes instead of just

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letting it happen without any input and although many features included in vista

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were ill-conceived and later scrapped

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user account control ended up sticking around

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the most obvious benefit of uac is that if a malicious program tries to mess

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with your system you'll get a pop-up before it can make any changes which you

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can use to deny it access but

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many other things can result in Windows saying to a program

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just what do you think you're doing and asking for your approval so installing

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drivers altering many system-wide settings defragmenting a hard drive or

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even changing the contents of a folder that the operating system protects like

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program files will raise the suspicion of Windows and cause a uac prompt to

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appear asking for administrator privileges

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so these are the privileges that we talked about a few minutes ago that

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older versions of Windows just gave out like candy

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and another feature of uac called virtualization even creates special

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virtual folders for programs without administrator privileges if they try to

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write to an actual protected folder like program files to prevent important

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applications from getting corrupted so it's not surprising that when you try

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to install new software you might see a uac prompt or even two since program

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installers often have to make changes to files and settings that Windows consider

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sensitive and if you're setting up a new pc well

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it can be annoying since you probably have a lot of applications drivers and i

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mean even hardware to install so like

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we get it and it's especially irritating to deal with uac when you're opening or

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installing programs but we definitely recommend against

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disabling it doing this could allow malware to run in the background

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completely undetected and besides many modern programs are now written with uac

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in mind and don't just assume that Windows will give them administrator

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privileges so it's becoming more and more common to see programs that will

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run just fine without uac approval

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the most important thing though is if you do leave it enabled make sure you're

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actually using it leaving it on only to just click yes

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every single time without reading the prompt isn't going to help you much it's

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kind of like getting a smart video doorbell and then just buzzing in the

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crazed looking guy with the knife speaking of knives don't cut away from

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so thanks for watching guys like dislike check out our other videos leave a

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comment if you have suggestions for future fastest possibles and don't

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forget to subscribe it's like really really important

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