No. Did not find a solution. Tried everything! .. Vista 64 whipped me. Too threaded. It's like a chain of things .. Finally, I gave up, gave in, gave out and reinstalled Vista 64. I backed up my main drive data two different ways, using the Vista Backup routine and also backup up the old fashioned way by coping ALL the FILES on my main drive (C

to another disc. Lucky for me I have a 150 gig Raptor for my main drive, so with the low cost of 500 SATA drives I could back up the entire C drive by just copying all the files. This was important in restoring certain .exe files and even Windows Mail.
In my case I had to nuke my main drive as my copy of Vista 64 is OEM and will not do a reinstall or repair -- only a fresh install on a clean harddrive. My system now happily loads 64 bit software and runs faster as I expected of a clean install. I am gradually adding back the software I use. One thing I forgot was to export my Windows Mail message rules. That info is stored in the registry. I did export the entire registry file before nuking the drive, hence I have what I need to restore the message rules but will have to go through some hoops to get to it.
I learned much about Vista along the way and consider the whole experience a positive one. I'm doing a much better job this time of make sure I have restore points etc. and being careful about what software I add.