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I have work laptop which is set to highest UAC notification setting. It is extremely annoying, especially the bleeboops when I try to launch the task manager. I am able to set UAC to never notify, but after about 10 minutes, it resets to highest notification setting.

Is there any workaround for this? For example can I have a bat file that lowers this every 5 minutes? At the very least can I make the UAC prompts silent (without disabling all system sounds, sometimes it is useful)

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    Since this setting is apparently set by group policy: Have you tried talking to your IT department and asking them to change this setting for your laptop? Being a (part-time) sysadmin myself, I'd happily modify our IT security policy if there is a good reason for it (and "being annoying while not effectively increasing security" is a good reason), but I'd be mad if I found out that someone tried to work around my security measures without talking to me first.
    – Heinzi
    Commented Jan 20, 2021 at 12:36
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    As a sound-sensitive introvert, I simply turned ALL system sounds to "mute" . This gets rid of notification bleeps from any source but does not interfere with sound from Teams/Zoom/etc meetings, or from web-page videos.
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Jan 20, 2021 at 13:46
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    @Heinzi Afaics UAC on the highest level actually is a security boundary (contrary to all other levels..) so that's probably the reason why they set it to that. Personally I turn off all the system sounds for the same reason too.
    – Voo
    Commented Jan 20, 2021 at 14:22
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    @Voo: If your user account has admin access on two machines, limited tokens can spawn elevated processes by accessing the machines over \\machine\c$ shares. No UAC demand is ever generated. (Note that these paths don't work when accessing the same machine so you really do have to have two.) Otherwise, the solution is to set a trap in the registry (event viewer is a common bait program) and wait for the next legit elevation.
    – Joshua
    Commented Jan 20, 2021 at 21:39
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    @Voo: It involves swapping system binaries with hacked versions followed by using sc to restart services. Now, if you have separate user and admin accounts that's a real security barrier no matter what you set UAC to (even all the way down).
    – Joshua
    Commented Jan 20, 2021 at 22:16

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Your IT dept may take a dim view of changing when UAC is triggered.

To turn the sound off try StartMenu -> Search -> Change system sounds. Then in Program Events change the sound for Windows User Account Control to Sounds: (None). This entry is the last in the Windows group. (None) is at the start of the Sounds: list.

You can use the left arrow on your keyboard to close each group, and then right arrow to re-open the Windows group. Then the End key to go to end of the list, the Windows User Account Control entry should be at the end of the list. enter image description here

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    A solution that I can live with without being.. too bold. Thx.
    – Gappy Hilmore
    Commented Jan 20, 2021 at 16:55
  • I think "may" is being charitable. I've not seen a corporate IT policy where OP's proposed intervention would not be directly forbidden and quite seriously grounds for termination.
    – J...
    Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 14:22

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