I leave UAC exactly where it is. I WANT to know if a program is asking for administrator permissions to mess around with Windows folders. This was a HUGE security fix from the Windows XP and earlier days where everything just had full rights to do anything it wanted on your PC without asking your permission first. People bitched about Windows Vista because of this...yet they ASKED for it when they kept bitching about how "easy" it was to get hacked on the Windows OSs. When you turn UAC off like that, how the hell do you know when a program is asking for (AND GETTING!) admin access to your Windows Registry or system folders and when it is not? I also had my Windows Updates to wait until I initiated them myself, but I tended to check about once a week. Now with Windows 10, I don't bother with checking as it will usually install them automatically. I like how there is less overhead with the updates now in 10 than there used to be in 7. Updates used to be able to bog a system down sometimes.
I always hated Quick Launch in Vista and later. In XP it was useful because you couldn't pin program launchers to the taskbar yet. I always turned off desktop widgets because I never found any of them useful. And in XP, I used to change the Control Panel list to All Items, but once I started messing around with Windows 7 in 2010, I made myself learn how categories were organized. Now, I find the All Items view too noisy and it takes too long to find the app I want, such as uninstalling programs. I always end up switching it back to Category view now just to be able to click the hot-link to uninstall programs in the bottom left. I know that Outlook Mail settings are under the Users category and that Java is under the Programs categories. I don't have to go looking for them, they are there.
What was slightly confusing at first was the changes in Windows 10. Updates are now under System Settings, not Control Panel. Also user account management happens there too. But it also makes sense if you stop and think about it. The System Settings window is also where you go to TURN OFF all the crap that runs in the background. I go in and I tell Windows to stop "getting to know me" so that it stops tracking my typing and websites I go to and stuff. I also don't like Cortana so I turn that off. Then I turn off web searches from that search bar because it ALWAYS uses BING and I've never had any good luck with Bing searches - I only use Google. So now that search bar only searches my PC locally for stuff. I then minimize it to a Search Icon so it doesn't take up space on my taskbar. I then remove 100% of the Start Menu icons and then put the ones I want there and arrange them. It quiets the noise and makes it a lot more useable.
Even with an Administrator account you can't even access certain files and folders because of the UCC. It's the owner's computer, so they should have the right to access everything on their PC.
This is where I have to disagree. Certain system folders and locations on your hard drive have been configured with SYSTEM as the owner and without user-level access permissions. You're exactly right that it's UAC locking you out of those files/folders, but that's for good reason. If it's blocking you, it's also blocking every other program that doesn't have SYSTEM (a.k.a. ROOT) level access, so a stupid Malware can't completely screw up Windows. But there are ways to get past those locks if you know what you are doing. For example, if you have Administrator rights on your account (where UAC asks Yes or No without prompting for a password), you can actually change the user permissions on that folder to give you access. Usually, you have to TAKE OWNERSHIP of the folder or file first before you can do that. Then you just add yourself as a user access level and then give yourself Full Control permissions. Then you will be able to enter the folder and see what's there. This seems awfully tedious, but again keep in mind it was done this way for a good reason and it probably means you're not supposed to be messing around in there or you could f*** up Windows. THEN you'd have a totally different problem....Windows not booting at all.
I AM the owner and I DO have access to everything on my PC. But some things I don't want ANYTHING ELSE to have access too, so if I have to put some effort into getting to it, I feel better because I know it's a more secure location on my HDD. Besides, why are you trying to dig into something like C:\Windows\WinSxS ? Did you drop some personal income tax forms in there or something? Seriously, if you want THAT much granular control over your OS, switch to an OS that lets you do that....like Linux. Go be a Linux fanboy. It's everyone trying to armwrestle Windows into doing something it was not designed to do that gets these Windows installations all screwed up in the first place. I've had more complaints about "slow computers" and I see they already tried using an off-the-shelf PC scanner software thing I've never heard of. I have to manually remove those software and all the registry entries they leave behind before Windows can finally take back control of the computer....and it magically starts running faster. Weird how that works, huh?
Of course, this is all talk about Windows Vista and up. I wasn't as well versed in Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows 2000, or Windows 98 before all that. But I will say that without all the security crap running on my old Win 98 box, it runs pretty fast and smooth on only a 350MHz processor with 128MB of RAM. (Yes, I know I rebuilt it with 256MB, shutup!)
