Administrator privileges broken

Win 2K, SP4

I want to remove an application (Veritas Simple Backup) and install other apps. Windows Installer says I don't have permission. But as a user, I have given myself administrative privileges. How can I fix my privileges?

Thanx for any help.

 

Just to clarify, how did you go about giving yourself administrative privileges?

DRD

 

I have the same question as NetDoc. On 2K, a user account, by design, lacks rights to give itself or any other account administrative rights.

However, if your user account does have admin rights, you can simply Take Ownership of the system drive and that will almost certainly take care of the problem. However, if the account does not have admin rights, that approach is a bad idea that won't work.

 

I am placed in the Administrators Group

 

Even logging on as Administrator, I get: "This installation is forbidden by system policy. Contact your system administrator. "

 

Did you try Taking Ownership of the drive/partition? Often you can do that even when you are denied permission to perform some other action and after you become the owner, you can do the original action (installing in your case).

 

You'll probably roll your eyes when you read this (with some justification), but this is the setup:

Win2K and some applications are installed on two partitions of one physical drive, formatted as FAT32, not NTFS. This is a carry-over from upgrading from an older operating system. As such, I apparently do not have the option to set special permissions on those partitions. The Veritas software is installed on the FAT32 second partition. Most other applications and data are on other physical drives, formatted as NTFS.

Another observation: When I double-click on Drive C: in My Computer, Windows Installer asks for the installation disk for Veritas Simple Backup. I have to either press Cancel or browse to find the file Simple.msi on the CD. After a few seconds, I get access to Drive C. But I still cannot remove that application using the Control Panel. Sometimes it also asks for the installation disk for EasyCD Creator Platinum. Windows Installer seems to think it has some unfinished business, but I can't seem to get it satisfied. Reboots don't help.

It almost sounds like I ought to wipe that drive and reinstall Win2K with the drive formatted as NTFS. Or make the switch to XP.

 

Wipe & reload is certainly an option but how about trying to run convert from a cmd prompt on that partition to switch it to NTFS so you then have a full set of security options available to you.

 

But this problem has nothing to do with file permissions, especially if the partition is FAT32. Try checking the Local Security Policy to see if something is weird there.

Also have you tried the MS Knowledge Base?

DRD