I was getting this error when trying to run the configuration wizard for the SharePoint 2010 RC Hyper-V Image.
In the wizard, I was specifying a domain account with sufficient permissions, but I still got the access denied error. The solution was quite simple, I had forgotten that I was logged into the machine as the local admin account—not a domain account. The config wizard needs to read some info about the domain account you’re using for the setup. When I switched users to my own domain account, the wizard ran successfully.
Here’s a snipped from the install log:
Task configdb has failed with an unknown exception 03/19/2010 06:38:14 9 ERR Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: An error occurred while getting information about the user SharePointAdmin at server internal: Access is denied
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.NetUserGetInfo1(String server, String name
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPManagedAccount.GetUserAccountControl(String username)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPManagedAccount.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPApplicationPool.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication.CreateDefaultInstance(SPWebService service, Guid id, String applicationPoolId, SPProcessAccount processAccount, String iisServerComment, Boolean secureSocketsLayer, String iisHostHeader, Int32 iisPort, Boolean iisAllowAnonymous, DirectoryInfo iisRootDirectory, Uri defaultZoneUri, Boolean iisEnsureNTLM, Boolean createDatabase, String databaseServer, String databaseName, String databaseUsername, String databasePassword, SPSearchServiceInstance searchServiceInstance, Boolean autoActivateFeatures)