Vista - File level security and common administrator tools

I have this problem with using standard admin tools such as regedit. The
powers that be have instituted a GPO which restricts the use of regedit and
other tools to administrators only. They did this by settings permissions on
the executables themselves, this was no problem with Windows XP. However,
Vista presents a problem. The problem with this is that Vista gives an
access denied message whenever I try and run regedit. It doesn't matter
that I am logged on as an "administrator" or trying to use the right/click
run as administrator option, the results are still the same, an error is
received.

If I add "USERS" read & execute permissions to the regedit.exe, then I can
run the program. Problem being that the GPO keeps overwriting theses
permissions and then the program will not run again. So, being smarter than
the GPO writers, I copied the regedit.exe and renamed it and tried to run it.
No dice, it doesn't give an access denied error , instead it brings up the
"UAC" window but then simply closes after I click continue.

What is happening with these executables such that I can't even get them to
run afetr making a copy of them and renaming them?