Re-Installing Daemon Tools Lite (and SPTD) on Windows 7

August 14, 2009 · 2 min read

After the update from Windows 7 RC to RTM I noticed Daemon Tools was gone. I tried to reinstall it but it was impossible. Daemon Tools relies on SPTD (a SCSI pass through driver) to do it’s magic and it checks whether it is installed. It seems that it couldn’t detect it on my system so it launched the SPTD setup, asked to restart the computer and then again and again.

I downloaded a new version of SPTD (1.60) from the product page but I had the same problem, SPTD installed, asked me to restart and then couldn’t detect the installed driver.

Googling I found out many others had the same problem and Finally I found a post in a forum explaining that it was a registry permissions problem.

I removed SPTD manually, re-installed and then re-installed Daemon Tools without a problem.

Here are the steps to re-install SPTD on Windows 7:

1.) Open regedit. And find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sptd. 2.) Delete that folder "sptd" in the registry. If you can't, just right-click the folder, and click Permissions. Ask for "Full Control". Do this also to a sub-folder of "sptd" namely "cfg" (i actually already deleted it so i forgot). Just find ways to delete the "sptd" folder in the registry. 3.) Now rename or delete the 'sptd.sys' file found on Windows\system32\drivers. 4.) Download the newest SPTD Layer version "http://www.duplexsecure.com/en/downloads". Install and wait for confirmation to reboot. 5.) After reboot. Try opening the SPTD layer installer again and see if it tells you that SPTD layer is already installed. If it says so, continue on installing your Alcohol 120 or Daemon Tools.

UPDATE: If you get “failed to open service key”…

I just upgraded my desktop to RTM, this time to x64 version and I got this error while running the SPTD setup. After some tests and reboots I figured out how to make it work.

Open regedit and look for this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\LEGACY_SPTD, try to delete it. If you can’t, try this: go folder by folder (0000 and control), open the permissions dialog, go to advanced, Owner and take ownership of the folder. Don’t try to apply the owner recursively, you have to set it on each individual folder. Then, in the security tab grant full control to “everyone” (again, folder by folder). Now you should be able to delete it. I also deleted the same entry in ControlSet001 and ControlSet002. Finally, just in case, delete this entry too: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\eventlog\System\sptd

Now run SPTD setup again, you should be able to install it and after a reboot install Daemon Tools.

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This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: Ariel Popovsky

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