>>Some anti-virus packages stop anything from happening that they consider "virus-like" behaviour. Depending on how aggressive the package is, that could include changes to registry settings, modification of critical .DLLs in the \SYSTEM directory, etc.
>>
>>If you CAN temporarily turn off NAV, I'd do so and try a complete uninstall/reinstall cycle again.
>
>Okay. It's worth a shot. I'll try it. I'd rather exhaust these other flavors of recovery than reinstall Windows NT and have to rebuild this system all over again.

Unhappily, it may come to that. In my experience, once you've installed/uninstalled a major package (VS, MSOffice) a few times, you've probably left a bunch of junk in the registry anyways - especially if you've ever had a hang on a system restart as "required" by one of these packages (i.e. various RunOnce options didn't run correctly).

Ultimately, all it takes is a lost half a day or so and you'd be better off doing a bare-metal reinstallation, then restoring your data from backup. You also have that "warm, fuzzy" feeling of a "clean" registry.