Cannot Install Windows XP Updates

Last week I received a new computer at work with Windows XP SP2 installed. So i wanted to install SP3 and all the updates available. But there was a problem. I could`t install a few updates including SP3 for Windows XP. So i started digging to find what is going on. I solved this problem by reseting the registry and file permissions.

To check if the registry update has failed go to Start->Run type %windir%svcpack.log. This way you will open the SVCPack.log file. Here search for DoRegistryUpdates failed. If there was a registry update failure a "DoRegistryUpdates failed" error message is displayed in the file.

How you can do that? Is not that hard you will have to be careful. First you will have to download and install Subinacl.exe file. After that open Notepad and copy paste the following text:

cd /d "%ProgramFiles%Windows Resource KitsTools" 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%repairsecsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

Save this text as Reset.cmd. Run this the script by double clicking in Reset.cmd.

Now you can install Windows XP SP3 without any problems.

If you think that this is too complicated for you you can download a toll that will do it fot you. Just download and run this. This is  a script from Microsoft Fix IT.