Last week my desktop computer harddrive fried and I am trying load Turbo Tax onto my old laptop. First it would not load because it could not find the dfshim.dll I found the program it needs for for that but now it says it says I don't have permission to write to the system32 registry. I do have 2 users set up on the system, myself and my daughter. I can not replace my old desktop until I can file my taxes and get the money so I really need to load this program. anyone have any ideas how to give it permission to write to the registry or how to force a reformat of the harddrive?

Are you logging in using an account with Admin privileges? What Registry key is giving you the problem? You could always check out TurboTax's webpage for Support and/or use their online software to file. Reformatting the drive should certainly solve your problem, but it's not something you "force." You'd have to make sure you have all the drivers before wiping the drive though. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

I have tried every web page and idea I can think of. When I set up the laptop I set up 2 users - myself and my daughter. I thought I gave them full administrator permissions, but maybe not. Figured that if I reformat and began from scratch I could forgo that step as my daughter no longer uses the computer and I only need my own access. I have every disk available for what is currently on the system. The problem is not actually with Turbo Tax's program it is with the fact that my system doesn't have the microsoft.net 2.0 framework dfshim.dll on it. I have downloaded that from microsoft by using both the "run" and the "save" commands and neither will completely install. It says I need permissions to write to c://windows/system32 but when I go to the c: drive and then click on the windows folder it is blank and when I finally got it to show anything all the files are the same title $spun stuff I can't actually see the system32 folder. Is there a way to just delete all the users so there is only the administrator? or to tell it to reformat the hard drive?

If you boot to Safe Mode, you'll be able to login with the default Administrator account and check the permissions of your normal login account. If you're getting access denied on the System32 folder (not Registry), then your normal login is probably not an Administrator. You can't just tell the machine to reformat. I'm not sure if Compaqs have a Recovery Partition, but you could check HP's website. If not, you'd need the OS CD that came with the system to reformat and reinstall the OS. You'd lose all your data, so you'd want to back that up first. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

I backed up what i needed to save and then deleted all the programs except the operating system. I then inserted the os disk and instead of offering me a chance to reformat, it just reloaded a bunch of stuff. I will try use your suggestion about the safemode tonight and let you know tomorrow what happens.

Which program are you trying to install? Intuit Turbotax fir Tax year 2008? This software requires - among other things - Net Framework 2.0 SP1 & MS Windows Installer 3. i_Xp/VistaUser

I was trying to install TT 2008 and yes the net framework 2.0 sp1 was the problem. I tried to go through safe mode and check the user permissions and it said I already had administrator permission so that didn't help. I ended up reformating the hard drive and reinstalling xp. As soon as that was working I installed TT 2008 and it went in with no problem. The only thing I have left to fix is that when XP finished installing I now only have a picture the size of a post card on a 15" screen. It is a laptop so I don't have buttons to fix the monitor settings. How do get the picture to fit the screen again?