This issue has bit me hard a couple of times this week, so I decided to make some notes on it. When installing a service pack on Microsoft Windows, you may get an "Access is denied" error message and have the entire install fail. In one case, I lost the entire machine and it wouldn't reboot. Another time, it survived the reboots, but still was a bit unnerving. Here is what I found out about the issue.
Apparently, this is a permissions issue within the registry. To verify this, check c:\windows\svcpack.log and search for "Access is denied". I found this in the log file.
1024.156: DoRegistryUpdates:SetupInstallFromInfSection Failed for ProductInstall.GlobalRegistryChanges.Install error: 0x5
1024.156: INF_REGISTRY Failed
1024.156: DoInstallation:DoRegistryUpdates failed
1034.047: Unregistration of sprecovr successful
1034.234: Access is denied.
To reset the permissions to the registry to the defaults you will need to use the secedit tool. I ran the following:
secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose /areas regkeys
/areas regkeys tells the tool to only reset permissions on the registry and leave the rest of the OS alone. This is important, since firing it off at everything will reset file permissions, etc.
Once the registry permissions are reset, go ahead and fire the service pack install again. I used "WindowsServer2003-KB914961-SP2-x86-ENU.exe /norestart" to prevent a restart before I was ready. For my issue, this worked perfectly.
Links are:
Access is denied when installing SP - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/873148
Reseting registry permissions - http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313222
