Fix Problem Installing Windows SDK for Windows 7

Windows SDK installation fails with following error

A problem occurred while installing selected Windows SDK components.

Installation of the "Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7" product has reported the following error: Please refer to Samples\Setup\HTML\ConfigDetails.htm document for further information.

Please attempt to resolve the problem and then start Windows SDK setup again. If you continue to have problems with this issue, please visit the SDK team support page at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=130245.

Click the View Log button to review the installation log.

To exit, click Finish.

Which is not too helpful because there is no "Samples\Setup\HTML\ConfigDetails.htm" on disk yet. This problem occurs primarily because the Document Explorer 2008 installation failed and is currently in a weird state where it cannot access its components in registry. Here is how you fix this problem..

1. Open Registry Editor (run RegEdit.Exe)
2. Browse to the following key. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components
   
3. Right Click on Components select permissions and then Click Advanced
4. Select the "Owner" Tab. Select  Administrators  (Group) . Click Apply.
5. Then Select Checkbox that says "Replace owner  on sub containers and objects". Click apply.
6. Browse back to the Permissions tab, select the Check box that says "Replace all child objects with inheritable permissions from this object". Click apply
7. You might see some warnings after applying permissions and owner settings. This is normal. Some windows components are restricted to changing owner.

And now try to install Windows SDK again. Hope this helps some one struggling with this issue.

If the above instructions did not solve you Windows SDK installation issue, then most of the times there might be a problem where your %temp% environment variable is pointed to. This is because some of the  packages included with the Windows SDK are are unable to resolve the %Temp% if it has either more than one path in its value or if it is pointing to the wrong directory.

To verify your %temp% location

• Open command prompt  (Click Start, type cmd.exe and click enter)
• Type in SET
• From the resulting output, look at what Temp= is pointing to

Verify that “Temp=” has a value similar to C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Temp  (Assuming your System Drive is C and Replace [UserName] in above path with your username)
This “Temp=” value should only have one location pointing to your local temp. Any additional paths in the value or different locations will cause a problem. If you find that this “Temp” has  some unexpected or additional paths in its value change it to point to the expected value. To change the value of your “temp” environment variable follow the below steps.

• Click Start and Right click on computer and Select Properties
• Click on Advanced System Settings
• Click on Environment Variables in the opened window
• Select Temp under User variable. Click edit and change it to C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Temp  (Assuming your system drive is C and Replace [UserName] in above path with your user name). Use only one path. Remove any additional paths or other paths.
• Do the same for TMP environment variable

Now try to reinstall the Windows SDK.