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.NET Framework 2.0 SP1 setup error 25015 failed to install assembly access is denied

December 4th, 2008 at 11:58am

So I’m running the Visual Studio 2008 install on a system the other day and it’s failing. Long story but we’re installing the .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 redistributable first to avoid the automatic reboot with the unattended VS2008 install. So the .NET install runs in unattended mode and near the end, it gives an error:

Error 25015.Failed to install assembly ‘C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.EnterpriseServices.dll’ because of system error: Access is denied.

I checked that the file existed and the permissions were normal. I looked at the log files and couldn’t find anything useful. I installed a file unlocking program to see if the file was in use and needed to be unlocked but it was never in use. I ran Filemon and Regmon to see if I could notice any weird behavior but I didn’t recognize anything out of the ordinary.

I turned to Google for some quick solution but didn’t find anything so I thought the next best thing to do would be to uninstall the existing .NET Framework 2.0 installation. Sure it gave me a warning that things would stop working (like the user’s install of VS2005!) but that was a risk I was willing to take to get this over with.

So I uninstalled the base 2.0 installation and then tried to run the SP1 install again. Same deal. So I ran the base 2.0 install to see if that would work. Nope. Same error.

So back to Google I went. Googling for ‘error 25015′ returned a bunch of proposed solutions. There was never a solution to the exact error message that I had but I was willing to try anything. With each one that I discovered, I thought I had found the solution. I’ll consolidate them here with some comments on how they worked for me.

• The first things I tried were what was suggested in Aaron Stebner’s blog since these MSDN guys always have the answers to Visual Studio related issues.
  • I ran the guy’s SubInAcl script, which seemed like a good idea. Reset all the permissions on the important registry keys and system folders. Perfect. Same error.
  • So I ran the guy’s .NET Cleanup Utility, which seemed like a good idea. Clean up all the .NET files and registry keys that might be causing problems. Perfect. Same error. I ran the utility choosing just to clean up 2.0 and when that didn’t work, I ran it choosing to clean up all versions of the .NET Framework. Same error. I ended uninstalling .NET 1.0 and 1.1 with no help.
• The next things I tried were suggested in the MSDN forums.
  • There were many success reports in this thread which involved deleting/renaming the C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 folder. Tried that. Didn’t help.
  • There were many success reports in this thread about delete/renaming/resetting permissions on the C:\Windows\Assembly folder. Tried that. Didn’t help.
  • Finally, on the very last page of the Google results for social.msdn.microsoft.com, I found this thread about deleting/renaming the C:\Windows\WinSxS\Policies folder. I looked inside and at this point, I had already uninstalled VS2005 so I knew I could delete any of the folders that contained VS80 or VS90 (from VS2008) in them. I was liberal in my deleting and decided to delete matching folders one folder up (C:\Windows\WinSxS). Then I noticed a little folder by itself at the bottom of the list in the WinSxS folder. It contained “System.EnterpriseServices” in the name!!! Holy crap! DELETED! Ran the install again and voila! It worked! I never looked at what was inside that folder on this machine before deleting it but I guess there was a corrupt file in there or something.

Well, this basically took up my whole day because now I had to reinstall VS2005 and then go back to what I was originally doing, installing VS2008 + SP1 and we all know how long that takes. :sigh:

Entry Filed under: computers