The default behavior of the
User Account Control (UAC) dialog is to disable (gray-out) the rest of the desktop when prompting for elevation. This is known as
secure desktop. There are reasons that you may want to disable this
secure desktop behavior, such as capturing a screenshot of the UAC dialog or moving one of the other open windows. There are, of course, security reasons for
not changing that behavior, which is why Microsoft made
Enabled the default. But if you want to disable the
secure desktop behavior of the UAC dialog, here are the steps (this technique works in Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11, but the steps vary somewhat in the different versions):
Control Panel
Administrative Tools
Local Security Policy
Local Policies
Security Options
Scroll down to the item
User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation:
Double-click it and you will get this dialog:
Tick the
Disabled radio button and then
OK. That's it!
To show the effect of disabling the switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation, I used it to be able to capture a screenshot of the UAC dialog for an
article that I wrote about the Samsung SSD 840 EVO Performance Restoration Software. With the secure desktop disabled, I was able to hit the
Alt-PrintScreen key to capture just the UAC dialog box:
I was also able to position on the screen both the UAC dialog and the window containing the imaging software (IrfanView) that I used to handle the screenshot. So when I hit the
PrintScreen key (without the Alt key), I was able to capture the entire desktop with both windows positioned exactly as I wanted them:
Update on 25-May-2015: I just tested this technique in the
Windows 10 Pro Technical Preview, Build 10122 (the latest Build at the time of this comment) — it works perfectly:
I just tested this technique in Windows 11. It works perfectly, although the path to the option is different:
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