Autodesk installation error: Could not open Key

During your installation of Autodesk products you get an error message stating "Could not open Key: UNKNOWN\Components\E44A6....Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel." You will need to do the following:

 

First very that the user who is logged into the machine at the time of the installation has Administrative permissions.

How to set users permissions instructions

Note: If you receive another error when re-installing the software, this indicates that another registry key may be affected. If this is the case, you will then need to repeat this procedure for the new registry entry. It is not uncommon for several registry keys to be affected by this issue.

You will need to click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and from the Edit menu click Find and type in the string in your error message.

This string is an example: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components 

1. Right Click on Components select permissions.
2. Click Advanced button.
3. Select the Owner Tab
4. Under Change owner to:  Select Administrators (Group) and Click Apply.
5. Then Select Check box Replace owner on subcontainers and objects and Click Apply.
6. Go to the Permissions tab, select the Check box:  Replace all child objects Permissions with inheritable permissions from this object and Click apply.  NOTE:  The wording maybe a bit different depending on your operating system.

To reinstall the software you will need to run in diagnostics mode. Instructions can be found here: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS75218

1. Click Start menu > Run (Windows XP), or Start menu > StartSearch (Windows Vista)
2. Enter msconfig and click OK. 
3. Select Diagnostics Start Up to turn off most Windows services.
4. Click the Services tab and select the Windows Installer check box. 
5. Click OK and restart Windows when prompted.

Note: This procedure does not require that you copy the contents of the CD to the hard disk, because the basic CD drivers will still be loaded in Diagnostic mode. However, you will not be able to access network resources.

To return to normal start up mode:

1. Click Start menu > Run (Windows XP), or Start menu > StartSearch (Windows Vista)
2. Enter msconfig and click OK.
3. In the System Configuration dialog box, select Normal Start Up.
4. Click OK and restart Windows when prompted.