I’ve recently come across a few Windows 2003 servers that were unable to start the DHCP Client service, instead an “Error 5: Access is denied.” message would appear. Now I’d kind of inherited responsibility of these servers so I wasn’t really aware of their history.
Although the servers we’re using a DHCP assigned address, they were being moved to a new site and network range and as dynamic DNS registration relies on the DHCP Client service its failure to start was making my life harder than it needed to be.
A quick Google brought me to this Microsoft Support article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/895149) which seemed to describe the problem well. However upon applying the fix the service still wouldn’t start and gave the same “Error 5: Access is denied.” message.
At this point I loaded up Process Monitor (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645) and started monitoring the registry while I attempted to start the service. A bit of digging later and I noted an ACCESS DENIED result when trying to open the key “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dhcp\Parameters” as shown below
So I granted the Network Service Full control over the key and retried starting the service, SUCCESS!!
If you come across the same issue give Process Monitor a go and keep an eye out for the ACCESS DENIED results when attempting to start the service. This should point you in the right direction.
Hope you find this useful!
n3ilb
Delia
Jan 05, 2013 @ 13:12:20
Hello, I enjoy reading through your article post. I like to
write a little comment to support you.
red
May 27, 2013 @ 07:44:20
this worked!
st4lker
Mar 27, 2014 @ 01:27:52
You are delightful person!
Thanks in millions!