How to Take Control of Your Desktops & Applications

User Account Control is a feature native to your computer that prevents unauthorized users from making changes to your system without your permission. This prevents standard users from adding or removing applications, or modifying system or appearance settings. Administrative users, on the other hand, have full rights to the computer. The Task Manager feature, alternatively, allows administrative users to force Windows to end existing applications and start new ones.

Enable Administrative Protection

• 1

  Log in to Windows as an administrator. Click "Start," then click "Control Panel."

• 2

  Type "UAC" into the search bar. Click "Change User Account Control Settings."

• 3

  Drag the slider to the "Default" setting or to "Always notify" to increase your system's security. Click "OK."

Control Running Processes

• 1

  Log in as an administrator. Right-click the taskbar and choose "Start Task Manager," or hold down the "CTRL," "Shift" and "Esc" keys.

• 2

  Select the "Processes" tab. Sort the processes alphabetically, or by memory or CPU usage. Right-click a process, and click "End Process," to force it to close. Click "End Process" again to confirm your action.

• 3

  Select the "Applications" tab. Click "New Task." Enter the full file path for an application into the new window. Click "OK" to launch the application.