Could not open key UNKNOWN\Components – fixed
When attempting to install Exchange 2007 sp2 on a server I was getting the error message Could not open Key UNKNOWN\Components\ 32 hex numbers \ another 32 hex numbers (see below)
This turned out to be occurring when the Rollup 9 package was being uninstalled. Checking into the registry and hklm \software \ microsoft \ windows \ CurrentVersion \ Installer \ UserData \ S-1-5-18 \ Components \ numbers \ numbers. Taking ownership of the parent registry key and then assigning my admin user full rights to the parent and cascading permissions would allow the procedure to continue a little bit further. Eventually after a couple of attempts I expanded the Components key in regedit using ctrl + and then used the arrow key to move all the way through, fixing permissions as required. The lazy way would have been to set permissions at the Components Key but that may cause other problems I didn’t really want to deal with in the future.
I have no idea why the permissions were so screwed up but I really do not appreciate wasting 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon trying to fix the issue – it took a while to debug the initial errors and then more time to run the install, find out it kept causing errors with different registry locations and then navigate through the entire component tree.
1. May 2010 at 8:45 am :
[...] exhaustive searching, I found the location of UNKNOWNComponents. The location is explained here. It is located at HKEY_Local_MachineSoftware [...]
7. August 2010 at 12:18 pm :
I ran into a similar problem with a SQL Server 2008 R2 installation. In that case there were about 150 entries that needed their permissions fixed up.
Regards,
Craig Huck, http://www.integritasystems.com
17. April 2011 at 1:45 pm :
SECEDIT /CONFIGURE /CFG %WINDIR%\INF\DEFLTBASE.INF /DB DEFLTBASE.SDB /VERBOSE /AREAS REGKEYS
5. January 2012 at 11:56 am :
Osman, you are a ROCK STAR!!
THANK YOU!
23. February 2012 at 10:41 am :
Osman, Thank you!!!!
28. February 2012 at 3:17 pm :
Osman, Rock Star indeed!
All hail!
22. April 2012 at 8:13 am :
total Rock Star! saved me
31. October 2012 at 10:04 am :
wow! Osman – you have saved my bacon!! I never even heard of that secedit but a huge thank you. I was having the problem relating to sql 2008 r2 install.
massive thanks!
27. December 2012 at 1:47 pm :
Osman is a Rock Star!
13. February 2013 at 9:07 am :
Thank you very much for the support… It worked atlast…!!!
steps:
1. open cmd prompt (run as admin)
2. copy and paste: SECEDIT /CONFIGURE /CFG %WINDIR%\INF\DEFLTBASE.INF /DB DEFLTBASE.SDB /VERBOSE /AREAS REGKEYS
3. Enter