Well, when I finally managed to cheat my way past Windows and rename the folder, it caused Windows to crash on startup. I rolled it back to my restore point, and it's all fine now... I've also installed Elemental on my other computer and have it updating now... no errors during the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 install on that one, so it looks like it's gonna work.

Happy to hear that. Although it sucks you couldn't get it working on the PC you intended to play it on.

I did a little more hunting in case you want to mess with your first computer anymore.

http://aspoc.net/archives/2007/12/05/how-to-move-the-winsxs-directory-in-vista/

That tells you how to move the directory, but the same walkthrough could be used for renaming it, or if you just move it to your desktop then you don't have to rename it because the new install of the C++ 2005 files will recreate the folder.

This is part of the reason I skipped over Vista entirely. </3

But anyway, glad to hear you've got it running on one computer. Is the second computer 64 bit? If so maybe you could just copy the winsxs folder contents from one to the other using your pre-windows permission work around.

THIS!

 Nah, the desktop is 32-bit Vista... 64-bit processor, but that doesn't change anything software-wise.

 Just thought I'd mention, Elemental is working like a charm on my desktop. I occasionally have certain UI buttons go unresponsive, but restarting the program clears that up fine... Yay! Thanks for your help, guys! 

UI issues? You running the newest beta patch or 1.11?

 The beta patch... I think the issue was that I hadn't disabled auto-turn, so a unit I had trapped and unable to move was causing my "end turn" button to reject the command. Although I do occasionally have the images on the troop quantity and quality buttons drop to the bottom of the troop training window... Odd.