Windows XP SP3 install fails with error code 0×80070005

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Windows XP SP3 installation may fail with the error code 0×80070005 and/or one of the following errors

Service Pack 3 setup error. Access is denied.

Service Pack 3 setup error. Service Pack installation did not complete

This is very likely a restricted registry permission in the Windows Registry. This could be caused an application like Antivius software which changs the System Access Control lists (SACL) causing this issue.

To quickly identify if it really is a registry permission issue check the

C:\Windows\Svcpack.log (or %windir%\Svcpack.log) for something similar to the following lines

DoInstallation:DoRegistryUpdates failed.
Access is denied.
Message displayed to the user: Access is denied

 

To fix or workaround the problem in installing SP3 would be to do one of the following:

Solution 1. Download the Service Pack 3 file directly from Microsoft Download Center and start the install to see if that helps.

Solution 2. Disable all your programs that doesn’t need be running at startup temporarily (especially your antivirus, antispyware products) and try again

Solution 3. Reset the permissions on the Registry and file by using the Subinacl.exe

Download and install the utility from here

Once installed, try the following:

1. Open notepad and paste the following text into it and save it as a cmd file (say resetperm.cmd:

cd /d “%ProgramFiles%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools”
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%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose

or download the file Reset Permissions script

2. Run the file resetperm.cmd as an administrator. This should reset the permissions. Now, try to install Windows XP SP3 and all should work OK.