SOLVED USB driver will not install because of access denied error

[Frank Schabel]

I have been trying for 2 days to get the driver for Kensington VeriMark fingerprint reader to install. I have tried everything I could find on the net short of a windows reinstall. I don't want the darn reader that much. This problem is really getting to me. The device is supposed to be plug and play and apparently some times it is but not for me. A driver is supposedly available through windows update. I found it there and tried to download and install buth the device is still an unknown device in Device Manager and the driver has disappeared from windows update. I downloaded the manual drive install package from Kensington but it gives an access denied error. Access to what? Access to system32 folder or the syswow64 folder or the infdefaultinstall.exe or to some location in the inf file where program components are to be installed? It just makes me so mad that Microsoft engineers spend years designing a new version of Windows with a pretty new interface that nobody needs when they should be fixing problems like this error which could actually tell you where the problems is. Does anyone have any new suggestions on how to solve this problem?

 

[Frank Schabel]

I see quite a few users have read this but no responses. I installed the drivers on a laptop with windows 10 that I only have as a backup and had no trouble. Looking at the driver files in Device Manager, it seems they are all installed in the System32 folder as expected. From what I can see the permissions and ownership of System32 are not a problem so one last time I turned off the Norton firewall and enabled the Administrator account and then from that account attempted the install again. No UAC prompt as expected in that account, and then you see the install indicator begin to move, which means files are being transferred, correct? Then the access denied error pops up. What that means I don't know but I am guessing that infdefaultinstall is running and that something was being written to System32. Maybe one of the subfolders is a problem?

 

[Frank Schabel]

found out how to locate event in Process Monitor. The data for the event is
High Resolution Date & Time: 10/18/2021 10:53:18.2179383 AM
Event Class: File System
Operation: CreateFile
Result: ACCESS DENIED
Path: C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\synawudfbiousbkens.inf_amd64_f947c1f25ad2109f
TID: 22316
Duration: 0.0000344
Desired Access: Read Data/List Directory, Synchronize
Disposition: Create
Options: Directory, Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Open Reparse Point
Attributes: N
ShareMode: Read, Write
AllocationSize: 0

The folder synawudfbiousbkens.inf_amd64_f947c1f25ad2109f must be the one it is trying to create since it does not exist in file repository. Does this information help at all? It must be a permissions problem but I cannot figure it out

 

[Frank Schabel]

It was a permission problem for file repository. It only had the user administrator as having any permissions at all. Added System as a user with full privileges and the driver installed. Getting one answer only leads to more questions. attached are screenshots of the privileges for System32 folder and Driver Store. They show Trusted Installer, System and Administrators having full control of all the files and folders in System32 and then System as having full control of all sub-folders and files in Driver Store so why weren't those permissions passed on to File Repository? How did System get removed from File Repository in the first place.
In my searches I found the command for restoring original permissions to a system file or folder. That means that somewhere in Windows Microsoft has a hidden list of all those permissions. Why can't you find it? I wish I had found the Winearo website back when I was first installing Windows10 because they tell you how to create a backup file of all those permissions yourself as well as how to turn on registry backups again, which have been turned off in Windows 10.
I hope this helps someone who is unfortunate enough to have this problem too. Problem solved.