I was given the same error messages after upgrading from 4.0.9 to 4.1. Splunkd crashes seconds after being started.
The splunkd.log mentioned that there were problems trying to move an "old style hot db", including an "Access Denied" for the db files. This seemed strange to me, as splunkd runs as localsystem (windows)
My solution was to downgrade to 4.0.10. Now Splunk starts, but I get another error message in the status bar within splunk;
"Misconfigured view 'splunkd_status' - Unknown parameter 'drilldown' is defined for module SimpleResultsTable. Make sure the parameter is specified in SimpleResultsTable.conf."
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