Insufficient privileges to edit registry

[shamrin]

I've got a Dell Optiplex here that won't boot Vista. It's blue screening with a 0x0f4 error which means basically that something's wrong. I would like to see the mini-dumps but unfortunately it's not creating them. Soooo, now, I want to mount the drive as a slave and edit the registry to turn on the mini-dumps however whenever I try to open the SOFTWARE hive I get an "Insufficient Privileges" error. Any suggestions?

 

[dgiles79]

Try using a boot cd (like hirens, it has mini xp), you should he able to edit or restore registry files from there.

 

[FoolishTech]

you get that message sometimes with a corrupted registry. try replacing it with the backup hive.

 

[shamrin]

you get that message sometimes with a corrupted registry. try replacing it with the backup hive.

Thanks for this. The hive was OK though. I ended up running regedit from the Startup Repair. I still need to track down why I'm locked out sometimes from editing external registries.

 

[MobileTechie]

Could you not just add your account to the hive's permissions?

 

[KM@ Dave]

Remains of malware, or viruses? Typical culprit for corrupt access permissions.

 

[hondablaster]

Can you copy the file to your local machine make changes and write over the old one? If you cannot, can you open it with notepad? (Don't modify or save if you can open it)


If you cannot open it with notepad I would look into the NTFS permissions. If it does open in a notepad I guess your search as to why you can't edit it with the proper software will continue.

I think this is what MobileTechie was touching on in his post...

 

[732914TECH]

if the machine your plugging the drive into is vista/7 you have to run regedit as administrator so it takes ownership

 

[shamrin]

Could you not just add your account to the hive's permissions?

As a rule, I don't like fiddling with permissions on live disks that I'm hosting on another machine. However, I had to grant myself permission to open the /config folder so I'm wondering if you're right here and I just needed to grant myself privileges on the hive. I sort-of think I tried this and didn't have sufficient privileges to give myself write access even, but I'm not sure. I'll try this next time.