Many times, I installed SQL Server 2008 and failed with just the error message “Access Denied”. One of the cases I found is that my Administrator account doesn’t have SeDebugPrivilege especially when GPO policy is in effect. I still don’t understand why anyone should be admin but cannot debug things :(
Check out the following links for more information:
http://blogs.msdn.com/joaol/archive/2008/12/02/sql-server-2008-installation-aborts-due-an-access-denied.aspx
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlreportingservices/thread/94f373ae-bb3e-4664-b0fd-95121d09f7de