User Accounts Control (UAC)

What is UAC?

User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, with a more relaxed version also present in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and Windows 10. It aims to improve the security of Microsoft Windows by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase or elevation. In this way, only applications trusted by the user may receive administrative privileges, and malware should be kept from compromising the operating system. In other words, a user account may have administrator privileges assigned to it, but applications that the user runs do not inherit those privileges unless they are approved beforehand or the user explicitly authorizes it.

Disabling UAC

DO NOT disable UAC. Before installing Maitre’D, make sure that UAC is active and set to the default (Recommended) level. As a security feature, UAC is required to operate at all times on all Windows systems that support it. This is also necessary to maintain PCI-DSS compliance on all systems using Electronic Funds Transfer, even in EMV environments.

NOTE: In Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, disabling UAC will cause some operating system features to stop working. Also, installing any software in a “non-UAC” environment and re-enabling UAC afterwards WILL cause issues. For instance, automatic End of Day may not work, or you may be unable to start or stop the Maitre’D Back-Office server from the Server Control module.