Ok, virtual monopoly money for whomever can solve this problem. It’s driving me absolutely nuts:
Background
I’m running Windows XP SP1, all patches applied. IBM Thinkpad A31.
Situation
My user name is the administrator (only one). I’m logged in as administrator. When installing any driver update, it prompts, as usual for the location of the driver. I enter the driver location, the driver does the installation procedure, as typical. On the very end, I’m informed by my wonderful OS that it failed because of “Permission Denied”. No more information is known. The driver is located in C:\Drivers (which is where IBM places all drivers prior to installation, and has worked historically).
This happens for all devices.
Mission
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to notify me of the cause, and most importantly how to remedy this annoying issue.
Needless to say, I’m a bit pissed. My Macs don’t do this BS. They work.
5 replies on “Windows XP = Pain in my Butt”
Using NTFS?
I have 2 possible scenarios/solutions:
1) Possibly the directory is marked Read-Only, or with permissions not assigned to your administrator login.
2) Does your administrator account have a password? Some programs will not install if they cannot detect that they’re running as a certain user. They have trouble verifying what user they’re running as if there’s no password specified for the admin account.
Also, I’d suggest that you create a user account for day-to-day things. Running as admin in Windows is like running as root in Linux. You’re potentiall asking for trouble.
Robert, is the admin account you are using one you created or did it come with the system? It may be that your username does not have permission to overwrite the original file because it belongs to the original machine administrator account that set up the machine and, by default, this is not enumerated as “administrator” on Windows XP machines. You can take ownership of the file if you can find it though.
You also didn’t mention if you are using XPHome or Pro.
Try this: create a new user account and make it an administrator account. Then try updating a driver.
Also look in c:\documents and settings (be sure to turn on hidden files and folders in folder options) and see how many profile folders there are. You should see one for every user account created, that might give you a pointer.
If you can let me know the name of the file that causes the error, perhaps I can help further.
Marty
I know it all,you can’t tell me anything
I am an administrator and I can’t seem to change the password policy on my domain. What happened?