I recently had an issue with a GOG game, and one of the suggestions that GOG Support made was that I should disable User Account Control. Should I do this? Isn't it dangerous to do this? I have had this computer since March 2011 and the UAC has remained set to the default setting (one notch down from the top) for the entire time, and I'm a little wary of changing this setting. Is this concern justified, or am I being overly cautious? What's the expert's opinion on this?

A clever malware-writer can easily circumvent UAC.
Go ahead and disable it and see if it helps the game. You can re-enable it later.

What about the ones that are not so clever? Should we stop protecting ourselves from those who are intent on wreaking havoc but just aren't smart enough to figure out how to bypass all of the defenses? If all criminals were smart, the jails wouldn't all be full.

What about you, Jenny? Do you leave yours disabled?

What about everybody else? This thread has been viewed 50 times. Doesn't anybody else have an opinion on this? Does anybody else have their UAC disabled?

I leave mine on the lowest setting all the time. If you are having problems with a particular game, try what Jenny says and disable it for the game. You can always re-enable it again.

I do leave it on the highest setting for a few of the less tech-savvy people whose computers I work on.

They download the viruses/malware that are made by the clever ones. Don't worry about turning off UAC to test a game.

Check ***here***

The UAC on our computer was set to the highest setting when it was installed. And I haven't made any adjustments or had any problems playing the few games I've played.

Whether or not you toy with the UAC, it's best to have a good malware and anti-virus program sitting in the background doing their thing, all by themselves. Ones, preferably, that don't get excited with every Tom, Dick, and Harry game you download and run. IMHO.

One other suggestion if it is okay: 1)Are you having issues installing the game? or playing it? If your issue is related to playing the game you might want to try starting the game by using "Run as Administrator" or if your having troubles installing the game then choose to install the game "Run as Administrator".
I hope I explained this right, if not, please delete my post.

Good luck

I didn't have any problems installing or playing the game. The game was GOG's Sanitarium, and the only issue I had was that when I quit the game there was still a very small window opened that was titled DXWnd, which could be closed by right-clicking its icon on the taskbar and selecting "Close window" There was also another icon in the notification area that was labeled Start.exe. Right-clicking on this icon brought up a menu with 3 items, "Suspend Hotkeys", "Pause Script" and "Exit". Start.exe was also listed in the Processes section of Task Manager. Selecting "Exit" from the popup menu closed Start.exe. GOG support said that both of these were required to run Sanitarium, but they should have closed automatically when Sanitarium closed. They suggested "Run as Administrator" as well as disabling UAC. Neither of them changed the situation, so I re-enabled UAC. After sending them the report from DXDiag, they came back and said that Sanitarium did not support Windows 7. It is, however, working properly as far as I can tell. I have not finished it yet, but I have played a considerable portion. If you're familiar with the game, I'm up to the Hive chapter, and have encountered no problems. This morning even those non-closing issues stopped happening, and the game has been shutting down normally.

Thanks to everybody for the help and advice.