What is Windows Vista User Account Protection (UAP)?

A. Users and administrators who log on with highly privileged accounts for their typical day-to-day activities leave their systems vulnerable to Trojan horses and viruses. UAP or Limited User Accounts (LUA) as it's also known, is a new security feature in Vista that protects the system by restricting the system to limited privileges even if you're logged on to an account with Administrative credentials. When you attempt to run a feature that requires administrative credentials, the system prompts you for your password (or prompts you to log on using a different account) as the figure shows.

You can change this feature to just ask whether you want to run the program with administrative credentials and therefore not have to retype your password. To do so perform these steps:

To disable UAP, click Start, "Turn UAP Settings On or Off," and click Yes, as the figure shows. You'll need to log out and log on for the change to take effect.