This message has started popping up an users computer. “Setup Error: You do not have permission to update Windows XP. Please contact your system administrator.” when we tried installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 recently.

After clicking OK we are presented with the familiar “Installing Updates: Some updates were not installed” message, with the only option to Close and return to the previous service pack.

This looks like a similar problem we experience on another users computer, see Dealing With Windows Update Error 0×8007F004 and after tracking down the Microsoft Support Site I was led to the knowledge base article KB 888791 which seems to echo much of the work done in the previous post. After applying the recommended updates and using the ones from the previous post we still experienced a problem installing Service Pack 3, however the way we resolved this particular problem was to download the Windows XP Service Pack 3 Network Installation Package – once we ran the update using this program it installed fine. I can only imagine some transient condition must have been causing an issue when downloading the service pack.

Related

• Dealing With Windows Update Error 0x8007F004
• Windows Update Agent Error
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• XP: There is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card.
• How to prevent automatic update warning on Terminal Services