Windows 7 registry permissions

[VectraMan]

In case anyone's paying attention, it seems I had to set the owner of the keys. Setting the owner of the parent folder and children failed, but explicitly setting the owner of the child to Administrator, and I was then able to allow Administrator to access it. And now VS2010 installs. Phew.

[VectraMan]

On my Windows 7 x64 Professional laptop, I have a problem with VS2010. I had installed the Express version, which worked (albeit slowly) apart from being able to create projects. It would just say "project creation failed", and that was that. On my desktop machine (with the same OS) it worked, so I ended up creating projects on the desktop machine. Much searching and I found the issue is to do with permissions in the registry in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\VSWizard.VSWiz ardEngine.10.0

But none of the solutions would fix it.

I now have VS2010 Pro, but this time it won't even install because it cannot write to the same registry key.

With regedit I can see that key, but the CLSID key that's beneath it just says "Access is Denied". If I try to edit the permissions, it says I do not have permission to view the permissions, but I can change them. Which is a lie as every time I try to add any permissions it says "Access is Denied".

On my desktop I can access the key.

My laptop and desktop are pretty similar: same OS, mostly the same software, both have the MS Security Essentials and no other dodgy security software. I don't understand how one works and one doesn't, and above all I don't understand how it is that with elevated administrator permissions I don't have permission to even see the permissions, let alone change the permissions, or even to delete the key. And how am I mean to get out of this situation?

Any suggestions? I'm tempted to just wipe the laptop and reinstall the OS.