How to fix Access Denied Error when installing Windows XP SP3

This afternoon I came to visit my friend’s place. I saw him updating his computers to service pack 3. All went well expect for the third PC, he received an “Access Denied” error message. What I did to help him is to restore the permissions. This problem is common to people updating their XP service pack.

Here is the step by step guide that I also use to resolve this problem.

1. Download and install SubInACL.exe.

2. Open notepad, copy and paste the following codes:

cd /d “%ProgramFiles%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools”

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
subinacl /subdirectories %windir%\*.* /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

3. Saved it as reset.cmd.

4. Run the file

Your Windows XP should properly install now.