If the registry cannot be remotely edited, primarily remote access to the HLKM portion of the registry is denied no matter who you connect to the remote pc as this is a security restriction put in place to prevent anyone remotely modifying this part of the registry.

But in turn also causes issues installing applications remotely, we have found issues remotely installing Sophos anti-virus & Patchlink patch software caused by this registry permission error, but can presume that many other applications will also be affected, if they need to remotely modify the HKLM portion of the registry.

To fix, From the start, Run Menu, type Regedit

Search for the key winreg

or go to the following location..

HKLM SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control SecurePipeServers Winreg

Right click on winreg, and open Permissions.

Add LOCAL SERVICE to the list, and give it READ permissions. Quite why this issue occurs is any ones guess, we tried to establish a connection between pc’s having this issue, and have looked at pc’s migrated to XP, only some were affected, newly installed XP pc’s, again only a minority were affected, there does not seem to be a definitive cause, so if anyone can shed any light on this subject, please let us know, and we’ll publish the answer.

Always make sure you backup your windows registry before making any changes, checkout our other registry guides

Search for more registry help

computer adviser remotely editing registry article