Coworker Pat Simpson was having trouble installing the latest RC of the Vista SP1 update. I was a bit stumped on why it was failing on Stage 3, but he ended up finding the solution before I was able to dig into the problem!
Check out the post
here by Gary Bouchard for a nice way to reset your registry permissions to their default values.
It solved the problem for him, and I'd only advise trying this if you are experiencing problems. Most installations will install error free without resorting to this.
If you are seeing, "Windows could not start the Windows Event Log service on Local Computer." and/or "Error 4201: The instance name passed was not recognized as valid by a WMI data provider.", give the fix a try.
A short rundown of the procedure (in case that thread goes away):
1. Make a backup of your registry.
2. Download and install
subinacl.exe.
3. Copy the text below into a text file called
reset.cmd and run
reset.cmd with administrative rights (it may take a LONG time):
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%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose
4. Reboot and check to see if the errors go away. Attempt installing Vista SP1 again.
This might not only fix Vista SP1 problems, but any other problem related to corrupt registry permissions. It isn't necessarily Vista specific either.
If you want to download a premade
reset.cmd, right click and 'Save as' the file
here.