process monitor sysinternals active window

Process Monitor is one of the trusty Sysinternals tools provided by Microsoft. However, on other more obscure processes or service related errors it can sometimes be difficult to quickly pinpoint the source of the error – what resource is having permissions issues or what location is my user not able to write, create, or modify? If you are creating a file or folder in a certain location and receive an “access denied” error, you know at least where the problem lies. Let’s take a closer look at Troubleshooting Windows Access Denied Errors with Process Monitor and see how this powerful little tool can allow you to find the source of the error in minutes if not quicker. However, as we worked together on the issue, I pulled out a trusty tool that I have often use with troubleshooting Windows access denied errors – Process Monitor. He had spent hours in troubleshooting the issue. He had done all of the basic troubleshooting steps of looking through logs and making sure the user being assigned to the service had the “log on as a service” right and other permissions simply to affect the behavior of what he was seeing. The error received when attempting to start the service was “ access denied“.

I was reminded of this frustration recently in helping a customer with a Windows service that would not start. Trying to figure out why Windows is throwing certain errors can be frustrating and time consuming. Windows administrators can spend a massive amount of time poring over logs and investigating error messages.

Process monitor sysinternals active window