How do I delete protected registry keys/hives?

Hello-

I'm having an issue with USB devices showing up as "unknown device." The
old WinXP solution was to delete a particular bunch of keys. This problem is
driving me a bit nutty- I'd like to delete those keys in Vista. Vista is
preventing me from deleting the keys though. I try to add Administrator to
the user writes and set the key to allow Full Control for the Administrator
account, however regedit then prevents me from saving that new setting.

Can anyone step me through the process of giving myself the permisions to
delete protected keys? Thanks much, Al

ps- I've already backed the keys up as they are now. If things go haywire,
I'll restore them. If I can't figure this problem out, I'm going to have to
reinstall Vista anyhow- so I might as well take a chance messing things up to
prevent the reinstall of the OS and all my apps...

By the way, I did right click on regedt32.exe and did a "run as
administrator" - still no luck with obtaining the privs to delete... Thanks
again for any help, Al

"A L" wrote:

> Hello-
>
> I'm having an issue with USB devices showing up as "unknown device." The
> old WinXP solution was to delete a particular bunch of keys. This problem is
> driving me a bit nutty- I'd like to delete those keys in Vista. Vista is
> preventing me from deleting the keys though. I try to add Administrator to
> the user writes and set the key to allow Full Control for the Administrator
> account, however regedit then prevents me from saving that new setting.
>
> Can anyone step me through the process of giving myself the permisions to
> delete protected keys? Thanks much, Al
>
> ps- I've already backed the keys up as they are now. If things go haywire,
> I'll restore them. If I can't figure this problem out, I'm going to have to
> reinstall Vista anyhow- so I might as well take a chance messing things up to
> prevent the reinstall of the OS and all my apps...

Which keys?

BTW, regedt32.exe has not been a real program since Windows 2000. It is just
a pointer to regedit.exe now.

"A L" wrote:

> By the way, I did right click on regedt32.exe and did a "run as
> administrator" - still no luck with obtaining the privs to delete... Thanks
> again for any help, Al
>
> "A L" wrote:
>
> > Hello-
> >
> > I'm having an issue with USB devices showing up as "unknown device." The
> > old WinXP solution was to delete a particular bunch of keys. This problem is
> > driving me a bit nutty- I'd like to delete those keys in Vista. Vista is
> > preventing me from deleting the keys though. I try to add Administrator to
> > the user writes and set the key to allow Full Control for the Administrator
> > account, however regedit then prevents me from saving that new setting.
> >
> > Can anyone step me through the process of giving myself the permisions to
> > delete protected keys? Thanks much, Al
> >
> > ps- I've already backed the keys up as they are now. If things go haywire,
> > I'll restore them. If I can't figure this problem out, I'm going to have to
> > reinstall Vista anyhow- so I might as well take a chance messing things up to
> > prevent the reinstall of the OS and all my apps...

Hello,

If you are trying to change keys and are having access troubles as an
administrator, it usually means that there is a better way of changing those
keys (via a system utility, for example).

However, if you really want access to those keys, you should be able to:

1) Take ownership of the keys (via the advanced button, owner tab)
2) Close out of the permissions editor and then re-open it
3) Grant yourself whatever permissions you want to have over the keys

- JB

A L wrote:
> Hello-
>
> I'm having an issue with USB devices showing up as "unknown device." The
> old WinXP solution was to delete a particular bunch of keys. This problem is
> driving me a bit nutty- I'd like to delete those keys in Vista. Vista is
> preventing me from deleting the keys though. I try to add Administrator to
> the user writes and set the key to allow Full Control for the Administrator
> account, however regedit then prevents me from saving that new setting.
>
> Can anyone step me through the process of giving myself the permisions to
> delete protected keys? Thanks much, Al
>
> ps- I've already backed the keys up as they are now. If things go haywire,
> I'll restore them. If I can't figure this problem out, I'm going to have to
> reinstall Vista anyhow- so I might as well take a chance messing things up to
> prevent the reinstall of the OS and all my apps...

Don't forget that Vista has Windows Resource Protection (WRP). Think of
the Windows File Protection feature in XP where system files that get
changed are automatically restored to their previous state. This has
been extended to include the Registry in Vista.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa382503.aspx

I don't know what keys are protected, or what symptoms you'll see when
trying to alter them. But that link says: "Resources protected by WRP
can only be changed by the Windows trusted installer."

Hope that helps,

David

Thanks everyone for all the help. I did indeed figure out another way to
solve my problem. My USB 2.0 devices started showing up as "Unknown Device"
a few days ago. Unfortunately I didn't have a System Restore point for
before this problem began to occur. The WinXP solution for this issue is to
delete all the USB entries under each of the
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\Vid_XXXXX entries.

Well, I had an extra USB 2 PCI card laying around so I installed that to
bypass my "broken" motherboard USB ports. That's working fine.

Looks like MS has a fix for this issue under X:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920875

hopefully they'll migrate the fix to Vista soon.... Thanks again for the
help!



"David Hearn" wrote:

> A L wrote:
> > Hello-
> >
> > I'm having an issue with USB devices showing up as "unknown device." The
> > old WinXP solution was to delete a particular bunch of keys. This problem is
> > driving me a bit nutty- I'd like to delete those keys in Vista. Vista is
> > preventing me from deleting the keys though. I try to add Administrator to
> > the user writes and set the key to allow Full Control for the Administrator
> > account, however regedit then prevents me from saving that new setting.
> >
> > Can anyone step me through the process of giving myself the permisions to
> > delete protected keys? Thanks much, Al
> >
> > ps- I've already backed the keys up as they are now. If things go haywire,
> > I'll restore them. If I can't figure this problem out, I'm going to have to
> > reinstall Vista anyhow- so I might as well take a chance messing things up to
> > prevent the reinstall of the OS and all my apps...
>
> Don't forget that Vista has Windows Resource Protection (WRP). Think of
> the Windows File Protection feature in XP where system files that get
> changed are automatically restored to their previous state. This has
> been extended to include the Registry in Vista.
>
> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa382503.aspx
>
> I don't know what keys are protected, or what symptoms you'll see when
> trying to alter them. But that link says: "Resources protected by WRP
> can only be changed by the Windows trusted installer."
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> David
>