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I'm logged in as local admin user and with UAC enabled I have to elevate particular processes to actually run as admin so I'm able to ie. edit and save HOSTS file...

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If I turn off UAC what happens with processes? Are they automatically executed with elevated permissions or do I still need to right-click and select Run as administrator? Because context menu still displays this option? But is it still valid?

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Is this just theoretical or do you are you planning on turning UAC off? If it's just for a few programs there might be workarounds that leave it off in general - Win 7 UAC is s a useful layer of security. – ChimneyImp May 24 '12 at 19:10
@ChimneyImp: It's more or less theoretical, because I did turn it off for some time, because I had problems with some software installation. And I noticed the Run as administrator when UAC was off so it made me start wondering. – Robert Koritnik May 25 '12 at 7:33
@ChimneyImp: But surely if you know what you do, keeping UAC off isn't such big of a deal. We used to not have it back in the XP days or even earlier, but we were fine, weren't we? If you're an admin or developer or some other computer savvy person there should be no harm keeping UAC off. – Robert Koritnik May 25 '12 at 8:11
You're right, of course - UAC isn't a big deal if you're a savvy user. It does help a little, though, even for power users. – ChimneyImp May 25 '12 at 19:02

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It's automatic. In Windows 7, if you have UAC off and start a process that requests admin privileges, the process will get admin privileges automatically. Incidentally, this is why you should leave UAC on unless you have a compelling reason not to, like legacy applications that don't play well with it - anything that asks for admin gets it, no matter the source.

You can still use the Run as Administrator link to run programs with admin rights if they don't request them, again often necessary for legacy or poorly coded programs.

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