# "Add Access Permissions" in dcomcnfg won't work



## mdevour (Jul 31, 2003)

Greetings! I hope this qualifies as a fairly obscure problem, 'cause I haven't found any answers so far... <sigh>

I have virtually all of the symptoms discussed in the following Microsoft Knowledgebase article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;274696

... although I am running Windows 98, original edition, with updates nearly current. (Except those I've not been able to get because of the current problem.  )

The above Knowledgebase article offers the following:



> CAUSE
> This behavior may occur because the Default Access permissions have been changed in the Dcomcnfg.exe tool.


So, following instructions, I open dcomcnfg > Default Security, and in the Default Access Permissions box, click Edit Default. The window shows *no* permissions at all, and when I click on "Add" I get the error message:



> The "Add Access Permissions" dialog failed.


Before attempting this fix I had always used only Share Level access. So I had to select User Level Access Control in Control Panel > Network > Access Control before dcomcfg would start.

I hope somebody can point me toward the file that needs to be restored to fix the Add Access Permissions dialog... or whatever else you folks think might be the problem.

Thank you in advance. :up: I'll be standing by...

Mike D.


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## mdevour (Jul 31, 2003)

BTTT! For one more try...  

Mike D.


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## dc57 (Oct 13, 2003)

Might be a silly question but, have you tried to download and reinstall dcom from microsoft?

microsoft download site


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## mdevour (Jul 31, 2003)

> Might be a silly question but, have you tried to download and reinstall dcom from microsoft?


Hi DC. Thanks for the suggestion. No, it's not a silly question at all, as I hadn't figured out to look there. <sigh>

Now that I have downloaded and installed it, however, the problem is worse. Now Internet Explorer will not display any web page that isn't right on the local hard drive. It just sits there with a blank page, the world spinning, and "Web site found. Waiting for reply" in the status bar.

I know that there's nothing wrong with the network, as all the machines can see each other, the router and DSL modem are visible from the machine I'm using right now, and even the broken machine is able to download POP3 mail with another mail client! Only IE appears to be broken.

Oy, this is discouraging! I'm open to all offers of help.

Thanks,

Mike D.


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## dc57 (Oct 13, 2003)

Mike,
I don't know if this will work with windows 98, but you might want to try and repair or reinstall internet explorer.
Go to control panel-add/reomve programs and scroll down the list until you find microsoft internet explorer. When you click the add/remove button it might bring up a menu that will have an option to repair or reinstall internet explorer. If so, try the repair first. If not, another option might be to reinstall windows on top of itself. Also, if this has only been happening for a short time, it might be possible to restore the registry from the command prompt using the scanreg /restore command. If nothing else, this post will at least get you back to the first page of the forum so more people will see it and maybe have a better solution.


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## mdevour (Jul 31, 2003)

dc57 said:


> ... you might want to try and repair or reinstall internet explorer.


Thanks for the help, DC. I reinstalled IE 6 SP1 yesterday by downloading the installer on another machine and squirting it across the network. It pulled files off the Microsoft servers just fine. I just now tried the repair option, too. No joy.

However, I seem to have found the source of the current problem of not being able to open pages at all: It turns out my AV software, PC-Cillin's web security is the culprit. Turning it off, pages will load again.

So, I don't know what changed to cause the problem with PC-Cillin, except that it happened when I reinstalled DCOM from the microsoft site. At least I can hit web pages again, and I can fuss with it later if nothing else I do makes it start working again.

*But the original problem is still there. Opening in a new window, or following links that spawn new windows still does not work.*



> another option might be to reinstall windows on top of itself. Also, if this has only been happening for a short time, it might be possible to restore the registry from the command prompt using the scanreg /restore command.


The idea of reinstalling like that scares me. I'd be using my old Windows 98 upgrade disk *plus* my even older Win 95 diskettes that the installer will demand for confirmation... If that solves the original problem, I'd be left doing another complete round of upgrades at Windows Update.

I'm not afraid of the work it represents, I'd be willing to do that, but I fear it's asking an awful lot of this mishmash of Microsoft software to expect it to do all of that cleanly -- as in not blowing away a whole lot of other software and data. Am I being silly? 

As for scanreg /restore, how far back does it go? When would it have saved an image, or would it be the last time I'd have done it myself, which I can't remember? <sigh>

Thanks again, DC. Hope that helps trigger some ideas out there.

Be well,

Mike D.


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## TheJuderman (Nov 21, 2004)

Sorry to hear you still haven't sorted the problem but you have helped me solve the same problem I was having in Win2K. In particular IE6 wasn't opening new Windows links which open in new windows wouldn't work. 

You're link to the KB article sorted this out for me (although searching still isn't working but I haven't rebooted yet!) as I had been troubleshooting a seperate DCOM issue last week and changed the Default Access Permissons, I removed the Interactive User Account since the fix I had didn't mention it as being required. I'm glad I found this post as I had started considering the rebuild option (not good) and was also worried that my system had actually been compromised in some way!

So the moral of the story for me is keep a better record of changes made and not mess about with DCOM too much!! 

Hope you manage to sort you're problem soon and if I see any other fixes that might work for you I'll post here.


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## dc57 (Oct 13, 2003)

Mike,
scanreg /restore will only go back a few days so, it may be too late for that now. As far as reinstalling windows, it's not like reformatting the hard drive and you won't need the windows 95 disks. Open windows explorer and go to c:\windows\options\cabs. In there you should find an icon for setup.exe. If you open that, it will start the installation process and reinstall windows over itself. If you should decide to try that, be sure to turn off everything else that is running before you start. Yes, it will mean that you will have to go back to Microsoft and get all the updates again but everything else should remain intact. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that this will fix it either so before you try that have a look at the thread below. It might give you some other options to explore. It may turn out that your problems are not related to dcom.

IE wont open new windows


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## mdevour (Jul 31, 2003)

dc57 said:


> ... Open windows explorer and go to c:\windows\options\cabs. In there you should find an icon for setup.exe. If you open that, it will start the installation process and reinstall windows over itself. ... there's no guarantee that this will fix it either so before you try that have a look at the thread ... IE wont open new windows


Thanks again, DC. I'm looking in OPTIONS\CABS and, strangely, there's no setup application. Any thoughts?

You do make the reinstall sound less threatening.

I'll spend some time with that other thread now.

Be well,

Mike D.


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## mdevour (Jul 31, 2003)

Hi DC,

I ran regsvr32 on the 8 dll's listed in the other thread. All worked successfully except the last one, shell32.dll. It yielded an error message: 

"shell32.dll was loaded, but the DIIRegisterServer entry point was not found.
DIIRegisterServer may not be exported, or a corrupt version of shell32.dll may be in memory. Consider using PView to detect and remove it."

After a reboot, IE problem is still there, BTW. Not sure where to go from here. What's PView? Does this need fixing too, or not?

Thanks,

Mike D.


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## dc57 (Oct 13, 2003)

Hi Mike,
That's odd that the setup icon would not be in the cabs folder. If you have the windows 98 cd, you can try to extract another copy of shell32.dll using the sfc utility from the run box on the start menu. That might not fix your IE problem but it should take care of the dll problem. 
As far as pview goes, that's a process viewer that will show you what's running in the background. I don't think it would be included with windows 98. 
At this point I'm running out of ideas as well. I hope we can come up with something for you. 
Anyway, try the sfc thing from the run box and see what happens. I will try to find out more about this and try to figure something out.


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## mdevour (Jul 31, 2003)

More strangeness, DC. <sigh> Used sfc to extract shell32.dll from the '98 disk, rebooted, and attempted regsvr32 on it again. Same error message as above.

Thanks,

Mike D.


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## dc57 (Oct 13, 2003)

Mike, 
Here's a couple of sites to check out. Hope it will help.

dcom configuration

microsoft support article


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