Make a backup of your registry (and a complete backup of the system wouldn't hurt either!)
Go to Microsoft's website and download a program called subinacl.exe from this site;
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en
Install the subinacl.exe (it downloads as an MSI file).
Copy the code below into a text file and then name the text file reset.cmd.
I copied the command file to my temp folder to run, but as you can see from the cmd file, it contains the path to the executable subinacl.exe.
@echo off
title Resetting ACLs...
cd /d "%ProgramFiles%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools"
echo.
echo Resetting ACLs...
echo (this may take several minutes to complete)
echo.
echo ==========================================================================
echo.
echo.
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
echo.
echo.
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
echo.
echo.
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
echo.
echo.
echo System Drive...
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
echo.
echo.
echo Windows Directory...
subinacl /subdirectories %windir%\*.* /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
echo.
echo.
echo =========================================================================
echo.
echo FINISHED.
echo.
echo Press any key to exit . . .
pause >NUL
3. As this command file runs it will show you the status of the reset and create a log that you can go back into and inspect for problems.
4. When this command file completes, you then need to open a command window (using Run As Administrator) and run the following command;
secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose >c:\temp\secedit_output.txt (the redirect of output echos the programs output to a text file, but secedit also creates a log file. The program will show you the location of the log file when it is done).
These two actions combined will reset the permissions on the registry nodes back to their default settings.
Reboot and check your Event Log service... at this point it should be running.