SP2 Reset Registry Permissions?

From: cpnet (cpnet_at_nospam.nospam)
Date: 09/02/04 

Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 15:58:56 -0400

The registry on my Dad's XP Pro - Dell OEM (member of a workgroup - not a
domain) seems to be buggered. The machine boots fine, but the permissions
on many of the keys seems wrong. A ton of keys have permissions only for
SYSTEM and Administrator. Administrator only has read permissions while
SYSTEM has full control. Also unlike other XP Pro machines I've seen, the
registry keys are set to apply to "this key only" instead of "this key and
all subkeys".

I found one key "HKLM\Software\Wilson WindowWare", where as Administrator I
couldn't view the permissions or owner for the key. I was able to change
the owner to Administrator, and then give Administrator "full control" over
the key.

There's lots of other funny stuff going on but you get the idea.

Dell has told me to re-install the OS etc., but I don't want to do that if I
can avoid it. I have a suspicion that a recent XP critical update is the
culprit of this registry permissions problem, but I can't be sure. My hope
is that if I am able to install XP XP2 on this machine it will re-initialize
most registry key permissions to their proper defaults. Will this occur or
does SP2 leave existing permissions on reg keys alone? If applying SP2
won't fix this machine, is there anything I can do other than re-install the
OS? Is there anything that could have caused this problem?

Thanks,
cpnet

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