UESP Forums

Hello, longtime reader officially de-lurking here! So I've got my hands on a copy of Skyrim but I'm having trouble with Steam. Every time I try to install I get the following error message:

Delete of steam.exe failed, Win32 error 5 access is denied

I looked on the Steam support pages and tried doing what they've suggested but nothing works. I've tried disabling the firewall and anti-virus, using safe mode, unchecking the read only box, using a different administrator account. The only thing I have noticed is every time I open the properties box the "read only" is selected again, even though I clicked apply. I'm on Windows 7.

Does anyone here have the magic answer?? The Steam official forums are apparently offline due to a hack. I was thrilled when I found out my computer would run Skyrim but if I can't play the game because this bloody Steam thing doesn't work I will be seriously annoyed! Thanks.

I'm not sure if I can help you with this, but I do have two questions:

1) Have you checked your Windows user permissions?
2) Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling it?

Not very helpful, but if you're patient I am sure someone in the community will come forward to give you a quick fix. (Additionally, I just googled and found this Microsoft answer, but it doesn't look to different from the Steam answer. Maybe you can try that as well.)

Thanks, but I have solved it! I needed to do some extra tinkering in the file folder. Skyrim is now up and running!

Good! Enjoy the game! And if you want, perhaps come back and say what you did; that way others who might run into this problem will be able to work through it as well!

Sorry, I meant to write a bit more but my daughter was keeping me busy! The shortcut on the desktop kept giving me the error message, so I went into the Steam folder under program files and opened the exe file (I think?) as administrator from there. Not sure why but that did the trick! I'm not the most tech-savvy person around, admittedly.