The tool required below, subinacl, is not supported under Windows 7. The “Windows Repair (All in One)” from Tweaking.com:
http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/windows_repair_all_in_one.html
does either most or all of the job of the below. But the tool is still available and reportedly works:
http://www.petri.co.il/subinacl-download-deployment.htm
Original text of this article is below.
Sometimes, due to all sorts of different causes, registry entries and system files acquire problematical permissions, wherein they cannot be changed, added-to, deleted, or read deleted by anyone, including either Administrator or System. Sometimes this can result in random bits of Windows denying permissions to administrators and others. In these cases, you need to get this:
This is said to be part of the Windows Resource Kit for Windows 2003, but I have found that if I install the whole 2003 reskit, it doesn’t work. Once you have installed the above, run the following commands from its install folder, or copy/paste them into a batch file and run it. There is no interaction involved, they just run. It can take an hour or more, but the results can be very good.
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_USERS /grant=system=f >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG /grant=system=f >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt subinacl /subdirectories %programfiles% /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=e >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt subinacl /subdirectories %windir% /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=e >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt