Access Denied - Setting Owner and/or Permissions on Registry Key

I am on a Windows 7 Home Premium system that was upgraded from Vista.  Several weeks ago when attempting to install Symantec Network Access Control, I ran into problems where the install would rollback because of an access problem with the registry.  Since then I have read and attempted numerous fixes.  None have worked.  My current problem is that VCRedist_x64.exe also fails to install with registry access denied.  Some of the steps that I have attempted include those in Mark Michaelis' blog.  This includes performing them from Safe Mode.  I also have run secedit /configure /cfg  %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose /areas REGKEYS.  Still can't get around the error.  The log for secedit includes some access denied errors for machine\software\microsoft.  Not sure how they might relate.  I can find specify key/subkeys with Regedit that have the problem...but so far non of the suggestions to reset ownership/permissions work. 

In advance ... I appreciate any new thoughts and insights to this problem.
There must be some way to disable ALL security on the registry long enough to clean this mess up...