Biden PC's Small Business IT Blog

Windows Vista has a "Safety Mechanism" called the User Account Control or the UAC for short. The UAC pops up tons of unnecessary windows asking you if you want to do this or that. Of course you do. That's why you clicked on it!

In computer networking it is often necessary to perform an "ipconfig /release" or "ipconfig /renew" but Windows Vista won't allow you to perform the necessary "ipconfig /release" if you have the UAC turned on. You'll get a message that says "The requested operation requires elevation." What do you mean it requires elevation? I'm already logged in as an administrator. Yes, you guessed it, the UAC overrides the Admin rights. So let's turn the UAC off.

1. Go to the "Control Panel" and choose "User Accounts".
   
2. Click on "Turn user Account Control on or off."
   
3. Get the stupid pop-up and choose "Continue".
   
4. Uncheck the box next to the sentence "Use User Account Control (UAC) to manage your computer."
   
5. Click OK then choose to reboot now or later.
   

After you have rebooted you can once again use the "ipconfig /release" command.

Thanks for reading.

Tim