Broken Visual Studio 2008/2010 Wizards?

On multiple computers at various times I have run into this INSANELY frustrating issue where creating a new project in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 will fail when the created project type brings up one of those Application Wizard screens.  The symptom is that instead of the Wizard showing its content a File Download window pops up asking if you want to save, open, or cancel the download of Default.htm.  Microsoft is surprisingly quiet on the issue, but its gone on a for a long time, since the IE7 days and VS2005, judging from the forums. I searched for "Visual Studio Wizard Navigation to this webpage cancelled" and every variant I could think of and tried multiple solutions until I found this: Microsoft Forum that at the very bottom linked to this: Registry Keys to Fix the Problem in which you can find the ".htm" fixer.  The registry keys that it defines are extensive, and I haven't gone through all of the file to see what exactly it does, but it does work.  Disclaimer is that I've only used this on Windows 7 32-bit.

Here is a listing of the registry keys from the second link, for posterity:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm]"PerceivedType"="text"@="htmlfile""Content Type"="text/html"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm\OpenWithList]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm\OpenWithList\notepad.exe]@=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm\PersistentHandler]@="{eec97550-47a9-11cf-b952-00aa0051fe20}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile]"AppUserModelID"="Microsoft.InternetExplorer.Default"@="HTML Document""FriendlyTypeName"="@C:\\Windows\\System32\\ieframe.dll,-912"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\CLSID]@="{25336920-03F9-11cf-8FD0-00AA00686F13}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\DefaultIcon]@=hex(2):25,00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,\  00,73,00,25,00,5c,00,49,00,6e,00,74,00,65,00,72,00,6e,00,65,00,74,00,20,00,\  45,00,78,00,70,00,6c,00,6f,00,72,00,65,00,72,00,5c,00,69,00,65,00,78,00,70,\  00,6c,00,6f,00,72,00,65,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,2c,00,2d,00,31,00,37,00,\  00,00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\ScriptHostEncode]@="{0CF774D0-F077-11D1-B1BC-00C04F86C324}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell]@="opennew"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open]@="Open in S&ame Window""MUIVerb"="@C:\\Windows\\System32\\ieframe.dll,-5732"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open\command]@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe\" -nohome"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open\ddeexec]@="\"file://%1\",,-1,,,,,""NoActivateHandler"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open\ddeexec\Application]@="IExplore"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic]@="WWW_OpenURL"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\opennew]@="&Open""MUIVerb"="@C:\\Windows\\System32\\ieframe.dll,-5731"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\opennew\command]@="\"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe\" %1"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\opennew\ddeexec]@="\"%1\",,-1,0,,,,""NoActivateHandler"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\opennew\ddeexec\Application]@="IExplore"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\opennew\ddeexec\IfExec]@="*"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\opennew\ddeexec\Topic]@="WWW_OpenURLNewWindow"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\print]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\print\command]@=hex(2):72,00,75,00,6e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,\  00,20,00,25,00,77,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,69,00,72,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,\  73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,6d,00,73,00,68,00,74,00,6d,00,6c,\  00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,50,00,72,00,69,00,6e,00,74,00,48,00,54,00,\  4d,00,4c,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\printto]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile\shell\printto\command]@=hex(2):72,00,75,00,6e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,33,00,32,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,\  00,20,00,25,00,77,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,69,00,72,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,\  73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,6d,00,73,00,68,00,74,00,6d,00,6c,\  00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,2c,00,50,00,72,00,69,00,6e,00,74,00,48,00,54,00,\  4d,00,4c,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,32,00,22,00,20,\  00,22,00,25,00,33,00,22,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,34,00,22,00,00,00
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile_FullWindowEmbed]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile_FullWindowEmbed]@="HTML Plugin Document""AppUserModelID"="Microsoft.InternetExplorer.Default"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htmlfile_FullWindowEmbed\CLSID]@="{25336921-03F9-11CF-8FD0-00AA00686F13}"
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.htm]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.htm]"PerceivedType"="document"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.htm\ShellEx]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.htm\ShellEx\{8895b1c6-b41f-4c1c-a562-0d564250836f}]@="{f8b8412b-dea3-4130-b36c-5e8be73106ac}"
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.htm]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.htm]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.htm\OpenWithProgids]"htmlfile"=hex(0):