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User Access Control has turned out to be a nuisance rather than a security enhancement for many people. UAC requires all users to run in the standard mode rather than in Administrator mode. This minimizes the risk of a user/program accidentally making system wide changes that could corrupt the OS. So UAC blocks and prompts for the Administrator approval for any system wide changes. Therefore with UAC silent installations won’t be silent anymore as the user will first be prompted by UAC to allow or disallow the installation.

Here are some of the actions that will trigger the UAC prompt.
* Installing and uninstalling applications
* Installing device drivers
* Changing UAC settings
* Configuring Windows Update
* Configuring Parental Controls
* Running Task Scheduler
* Restoring backed-up system files
* Viewing or changing another user’s folders and files
* Adding or removing user accounts
* Changing a user’s account type

Although it is recommended to keep the UAC turned on but many of us are better off with UAC turned off. So here is how we turn off UAC. There are a couple of ways to do this but we will looks at the easiest and most intuitive one.

1.) Open Control Panel.
2.) Under User Account click on Add or Remove User.
3.) Choose any User Account. (eg. Guest)
4.) Click on “Go to the main User Account page.”
5.) Click on “Make changes to your user account.”
6.) Uncheck the “Use User Access Control (UAC) to help protect your computer”
7.) Click OK.
8.) Reboot.

To enable UAC back on check the “Use User Access Control (UAC) to help protect your computer” box and reboot your computer.

Bonus:
Another method to disable UAC is by using the MSCONFIG method.

1.) Run Command Prompt as Administrator.
2.) Type MSCONFIG and press Enter.
3.) Click on the tools tab.
4.) Scroll down to click Disable UAC.
5.) Click launch.
6.) A command prompt window will open notifying that it completed successfully.
7.) Close MSCONFIG and reboot.

To enable UAC click on Enable UAC instead of Disable UAC in Step 4.

TIP: Adobe Reader reader needs UAC to be enabled during installation otherwise you might get a error similar to “The Temp folder is on a drive that is full..” or you need to run the installer in XP compatibility mode.