Sony Vegas Pro installation problems

Original post (see updates below):

Just spent two frustrating days installing Sony Vegas Pro on a machine running Windows 7.

After several failed attempts, during which Vegas installer quit abruptly with the message "requirements not met" I finally found a comment on an obscure forum that pointed me to something called the Microsoft Windows installer cleanup utility...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Microsoft says of this utility:

"Warning The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility is provided "as is" to help resolve installation problems for programs that use Microsoft Windows Installer. If you use this utility, you may have to reinstall other programs. Caution is advised."

I downloaded and ran the utility. It removed old C++ redistributables and remnants of a trial version of Office 2007. Afterwards, Vegas Pro installed smoothly. I couldn't find this documented anywhere on the web except in blogs and user forums.

UPDATE 1: When I ran the installer cleanup utility described in this post, it uninstalled Microsoft Office 2007. I'm thinking of wiping the disk completely now, and starting over. Grrrrrrr....

UPDATE: 2 My uber conservative advice, for what it is worth...
If you are seriously into video editing then i recommend:
1. First choice: buy a mac and final cut pro
2. Second choice: dedicate a windows machine to video editing ONLY. No MS Office, no email, no internet (other than the initial connect to register the product)... nothing but video editing.
3. Test the complete system: shoot some video, capture it, edit it, render it, write a 3 minute sample of rendered footage to your intended media (YouTube, DVD, tape, whatever...)
4. Shrink wrap the system. When you have the complete system working, from camera to output, "shrink-wrap" the entire system and NEVER CHANGE IT. No updates, no improvements, just editing.

Update 3:
1. (Re) Install Windows 7.
When prompted in early stages of install, reformat and wipe the disk clean.
2. Install Vegas Pro.
3. Stop.
Particularly, do not install MS Office 2007. My experience (your mileage may vary) is that Office 2007 and Vegas Pro do not play nicely together. It's got something to do with the 2005 and 2008 C++ distributables required by the two programs, and *possibly* something to do with the Windows 7 User Access Control setting.
Double Grrrrr....

Update 4:
I have the entire system running. Just captured and edited a short HDV movie, and rendered the movie to a "high quality internet" Sony Mpeg 4 file. Note: Before I could capture video, I had to dig through the Sony HDV camera's menus to a) enable HDV and b) disable automatic HDV to DV conversion. (It's a 2 year old HDV camera.)
Triple Grrrrrr......