Forceware 93.71 installation failure "Access Is Denied"

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,134
2,449
126
I'm trying to update the ForceWare drivers for my old NVidia GeForce 4 4200 video card, but the installer fails and quits without making any changes. When I try to install the drivers manually from Device Manager, I keep getting "There was a problem installing this hardware: Access Is Denied" error messages from Windows XP during near the end of the driver installation.

Here's what I've tried to resolve the problem so far:

1) Disable the Anti-Virus scanner and install the drivers again again. No help.
2) Uninstall all of the old video card drivers, and then reinstall them as administrator in Safe Mode. Same error.
3) Used Driver Cleaner Pro to completely remove the old drivers, and THEN tried reinstalling them as administrator in Safe Mode. Still Nothing.
4) Tried the new 93.81 Beta ForceWare drivers. Same dismal results.

Does anyone have any other ideas on how to fix this problem, other than reinstall Windows? I think that I'm almost to that point, but I'd like a second opinion before I have to blow my entire system away for such a small problem.
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,134
2,449
126
Originally posted by: Rage187
login as an account with local admin rights

Both my usual account and the administrator account are in the Administrators group, and I tried using both of them :(
 

fluffedup

Member
Aug 17, 2003
25
0
66
Had this same issue when trying to install (upgrade) ATI drivers a couple years ago. Tried Safe Mode, DriverCleaner (or whatever was the tool for that function in 2004), and none worked.

The problem was that registry permissions had been switched to "read only" instead of "full control" for some keys relating to the video card for the administrator (all other accounts had all other permissions removed from the keys). I don't know what made those changes, but they were the culprit. If I remember correctly, most were in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE group, but to fix it, I just went into regedit, searched for every entry that said "ati" and deleted the corresponding key. Maybe this would work for you if you did the same but for "nvidia."

Obviously, you wouldn't want to muck anything up so backup before doing it, but it's worth a try if there are no options left.

edited for spelling