My account was an admin on the machine and SQL admin as well, i checked the UAC from Control panel and it was already turned off as shown below
Looks like in Server 2012 and 2012R2, even if you changed the setting "Never Notify" as shown above (which worked fine with 2008R2) the UAC is still active. In order to turn it completely you will need to edit registry as follows:
- Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system"
- Change the "EnableLUA" key value from 1 to 0
- Restart the server/computer
Hopefully this can help anyone facing this issue.