Installation “Error 1402”

When installing or uninstalling Microsoft Windows component technologies on Windows, you may encounter a message box similar to “Error 1402. Could not open key: UNKNOWN\ Components\ 385C8F4C818DA64381F63245686473F0\…” Installation Error 1402 The long number listed is not an “address”. It is a registry parent container key name (as a GUID) and its child name (as a GUID). The last “\” character separates the two parent-child GUIDs.

This error is not related to our CivilGEO software, but rather to components which are provided by Microsoft. The following section describes how the error is generated and how to fix it.

How to fix ‘Error 1402. Could not open key: UNKNOWN…’

This error is generally caused by insufficient or incorrect permissions on the named registry keys, or parent container of such registry keys. In relation with CivilGEO software, it may occur after upgrading the computer workstations from Windows 7 to 10, and then upgrading or reinstalling Microsoft products or components. The error can be easily fixed; follow these steps:

Backup your computer or the registry. Microsoft’s built-in backup program allows for the “system state” to be selectively backed up. Alternatively, ZIP up the windows\system32\config directory while running in a backup operating system (this is where the registry hive files are located).
Log in as the ‘administrator’ (or an account with full administrator access) and disable the “UAC” (User Access Control). To disable the UAC, open the “User” control panel applet and select the Change User Account Control Settings. In Windows 10 the next dialog box will display a slider, simply set it to Never Notify.
From the START menu, execute Run… (press WIN+R) and then type “regedit“.
Navigate to the following registry root:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components

Note: The ‘S-1-5-18’ key may be different on your computer.
Right-click on the Components registry key, and then choose Permissions…
The Permissions for Components dialog box will be displayed.
Click the [Add…] button and add in the “Administrator”, “Administrators” and “SYSTEM” accounts. You might also want to add a local account having administrator privileges.
On the first Permissions for Components dialog box, click on each account (in the top-list) and make sure each has the “Full Control = Allow” and “Read = Allow” permissions.
Click the [Advanced] button to display the Advanced Security Settings for Components dialog box.
On the Permissions tab, turn on the Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object checkbox, and then click the [Apply] button.
Repeat the above steps once more. There should not be any errors regarding not being able to update the permissions on the child keys.
Exit the dialog boxes by clicking the [OK] button, and the main registry editor will become the active window.
Re-run the CivilGEO installer or uninstaller by right-clicking on the respective icon and select “Run as administrator…” (if available) from the displayed context menu.
If the “Could not open key” message is displayed, on the exact same keys, it means the above operations were not implemented correctly. Simply repeat the above steps for main registry root node.