What causes System Error 5, Access is Denied in Windows 11/10?
It’s very common to face System Error 5 on a Windows PC. The error message indicates that you don’t have the administrative rights to run a command in Command Prompt. There can be multiple reasons triggering the problem, but the most common ones are listed below.
Access is Denied, Error 5 while installing software
In this article, we’ll discuss a few tips to resolve this problem.
1] Sign in as Admin and Run setup as Admin
One of the common reasons is the lack of administration rights. If you are logged in as a Standard user, the installation will give you this error. So make sure you’re logged in as a Local Administrator. When I mean Local administrator, I mean to say that you need to log in as Local administrator – not Domain administrator. Because even if you are a Domain administrator, sometimes Domain policies will restrict access to certain locations. For instance, if you are installing Microsoft SQL Server, it’s highly recommended that you ensure that you are logged into the machine as a Local administrator; otherwise, you might get a lot of error messages including Microsoft SQL Service Fails to start.
2] Temporarily disable UAC
The other most common reason is User Account Control. Sometimes UAC will restrict you from accessing certain file locations or registry locations. The best practice is to always right-click on the setup and click on “Run as administrator”. By doing so, setup will elevate with full administrator rights. In some cases, however, we may need to disable UAC temporarily, until you finish the installation. To do so, go to Start under search type in “UAC”.
Click on “Change User Account Control settings”.
Make sure you drag the bar all the way to “Never Notify” then click OK and reboot the system and try to install it again. Do remember to change back the UAC settings, after you have completed the installation.
3] Temporarily disable security software
If it does not help, you may next try to disable your security software – because this software can be very tricky sometimes. It may restrict access to a specific path or specific registry location. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to find it out. So it’s better to disable the security software completely and then try to install the software. Again, do remember to re-enable your security software, once your installation completes successfully. Similar error: System error 5 has occurred, Access is denied appears when running a command in the Command Prompt.
4] Run the installation in Clean Boot State
Run the installation in Clean Boot State and see.
5] Take ownership of the Installer folder
There are some common locations where sometimes we are denied permission. So far, the locations I have seen are Temp and Installer folder. So go to C:\Windows\Installer and %temp% and Take Ownership of these folders. Then try again.
6] Use built-in administrator account
The last steps you could try is to enable the built-in administrator account:
To do this, click the Windows Start button and type in CMD.
Right-click on CMD, click on Run as administrator and execute the following command:
You will get a message “Command ran successfully”.
Next, execute the following command:
Please replace the
Related read: Windows Installer Service could not be accessed or started. How to open an encrypted file if Access is Denied may also interest you.
