Unable to open UAC control dialog

[antares]

I tried all means of opening the UAC slider menu (from Control Panel/User Accounts/change UAC settings, using cmd.exe, etc) but it never shows up. Verified file integrity, everything is fine. Any suggestions? Thanks

 

[Brink]

Hello Antares,

If you like for now, you should be able to use OPTION TWO in the tutorial below to change your UAC settings.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/5509-user-account-control-uac-change-settings-windows-8-a.html​

To try and fix this, you could do a system restore using a restore point dated before this started. You'll of course need to change your UAC settings back to what you wanted afterwards.

Hope this helps for now.

 

[antares]

Thanks Brink, I have no restore point (I had System Protection Disabled).

 

[Brink]

Was the .reg file able to set it for you?

 

[antares]

Right now it seems that UAC is disabled as it never shows up when performing Administrator tasks. I can test your reg file to see if it works to enable UAC as long as I'll be able to disable UAC back. WHat I'd like to fix is the UAC settings dialog not opening at all. Let me know if you want me to test your reg file anyway.

 

[antares]

UPDATE: the reg file was successfully merged into the registry, yes it works, yet the UAC dialog does not open.

 

[antares]

I did not mention, but about 2 weeks ago I had to remove a faulty RAM stick, so faulty memory could've messed my system?

 

[Brink]

Great news.

Usually, you just wouldn't be able to use the RAM when faulty. It shouldn't have caused this.

Go ahead and run the full SFC /SCANNOW command to see if it also shows no problems.

 

[antares]

I ran SFC/SCANNOW and no integrity issues found. I also ran DISM like 4 times both online and using the Windows 8.1 installation disk and it always shows the message:
"The restore operation completed successfully. The component store corruption was repaired. The operation completed successfully."

 

[Brink]

If you haven't already, see if running the file below from the Run winkey: + R) dialog will open User Account Control Settings.

UserAccountControlSettings.exe

As a test, are you able to open it while signed in to another user account?

 

[antares]

I tried all means possible to open UAC, including the one you mention (from cmd.exe as administrator) and no success. I have a single user account, myself as administrator. There's also an "Administrator" account, but I have not tested trying opening UAC from there.

 

[Brink]

If you are able to open just fine in the other account, then you could delete the old account and create yourself a new user account to use instead while signed in to the "Administrator" account.

 

[antares]

I just tried opening UAC in the other account (Administrator) and same issue, it's not possible.

 

[Brink]

Since you don't have a restore point, you could either leave it as is for now and use the .reg files to set UAC with, or refresh Windows to fix it.

 

[antares]

Since a refresh will wipe my desktop apps I'd rather opt for a fresh windows install, but before doing that I'll wait a bit more with my system as is, maybe there's some other solution. What about a windows repair that will preserve my apps? Would that fix it? Also, what about restoring/extracting the UAC exe from the windows install disk, is that possible? I remember it was possible with XP Another option: registry cleaners?

 

[Brink]

Yeah, you could give a repair install a try without losing anything.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/26095-repair-install-windows-8-a.html

 

[Ztruker]

What about re-registering C:\Windows\system32\UserAccountControlSettings.dll ?

regsvr32 C:\Windows\system32\UserAccountControlSettings.dll

Also, the two files I have in C:\Windows\system32 are as follows:

08/22/2013  06:53 AM            72,704 UserAccountControlSettings.dll
08/22/2013  07:10 AM           219,136 UserAccountControlSettings.exe

What do yours look like?

 

[antares]

Hi Ztrucker, mine looks like this:

I tried re-registering C:\Windows\system32\UserAccountControlSettings.dll but it was unsuccessful with the following message:

 

[Ztruker]

Hmmm, I just tried it and got the same error you did.

One last thing to try:

Open a Elevated Command Prompt.
Type cd C:\Windows\system32 and press Enter.
Type UserAccountControlSettings and press Enter.

See if UAC opens now.

 

[hawkman]

hklm

Hi Anteras,
what value do you have here,

HKLM\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\system

key enableLUA

value data 0.

Roy