Cannot Install Microsoft Security Essentials error code 0x80070005

by Dec 07, 2012

Error  0x80070005 | MSE | Can’t Install Microsoft Security Essentials

If you are trying to install Microsoft Security Essentials and you get error code 0x80070005 the first thing you should look for is an existing installation folder. There is a good chance that the trusted installer does not have permission to delete or overwrite some of these files. Typically I just delete the following folders if they exist and then I rerun the MSE setup program. In many cases that solves the problem.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft Security Client
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware

If that doesn’t work then you can run Sysinternals Process Monitor, exclude everything except setup and find the file, folder, or registry key that is showing with the result of “access denied”. Fix the access denied issue and Microsoft Security Essentials should install or you might advance to a new error code.

For Error  0x80070645 | MSE | Can’t Install Microsoft Security Essentials

Backup your registry and then delete these registry keys. You should have one of them depending on your OS:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\UpgradeCodes\26D13F39948E1D546B0106B5539504D9
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\UpgradeCodes\1F69ACF0D1CF2B7418F292F0E05EC20B

Good luck and let me know in the comments if this solved your problem.