"access denied" while installing driver

i like to wipe out my hard-drive and do a fresh partition and fresh install about every six months to keep things clean and tidy. i've never had any problems doing this before, but this time, after hours of putting all my programs back on and gigs and gigs of data files im working with, i need to use my scanner. so i go to install the driver and the process starts easy enough, but at the end, its stops and says theres an error, that the device will not be installed because access is denied. i've never encountered this error before and am dumbfound as to how i can fix this. anyone have any ideas? im running windows 2kpro. i would just do the fresh install again, but i don't feel like burning all the dvds for the gigs of stuff i've been working with, it would be such a pain in the a**.

 

Make sure your account has admin rights to the drive.

If you like to get a fresh start that often, you might do well to set the system up like you want it, burn an image (Ghost or similar) and then when you want to get a fresh start, just apply the image. All that would be left is to restore anything you've done fresh since you burned the image.

 

good idea about the image of the hdd, thanks. i do have admin rights, only one user account on this machine, im kinda stumped.

 

Try taking ownership of the entire system drive including all folders. I've never really been sure of the cause but have seen this cure strange permissions issues before.