I had no problems upgrading from AVG Free 8.5 to 9.0 on my desktop, but hadn't done so on this laptop because it's been very, very sick. We think it's now cured, but two attempts at running the upgrade installation on this machine failed.

The error message is:

Local machine: installation failed
Installation:
Error: Action failed for registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows: creating registry key....
Access is denied.

When we were "fixing" this machine, did we do something that is now preventing AVG from creating this new registry key for the update? What can I do to get the installation to finish?

I am running no other anti-virus or anti-spamware. I update and run a Malwarebytes Quick Scan daily, but that was not running when I tried to do the upgrade.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Hello is this XP or Vista? Are you running from an account with Full Administrator rights? If Spybot is running on here disable it.
Most antispyware, parental control and process monitor types of protection software can block the required changes.

Now follow these instructions. AVG UN and RE Install

It's XP Pro.

Did the uninstall and deleted the AVG folder; downloaded the file; installation was about 2/3 through and got the same error.

As stated in original post, I'm not running any other anti-spyware or anti-virus in real time.

But now, my AVG Free 8.5 has been removed and I don't want to do any web stuff until I get something! So I guess I have to go back to the desktop, after just getting my laptop back after a week of non-use due to all the problems I was having.

It's installed.

I went to this page at the AVG site

The 4th item down looked like the error that I got, so I clicked on the Reset_Access utility and ran that, and then re-ran the installation again and it appears all is well now.

Thanks!

You're welcome,glad it's straightened out.