Okay- I was running my own profile on windows 8 with admin settings turned on and the UAC turned off.
Apparently that's not good enough, my windows 8 came with an administrator account so I logged onto that and it worked. SO if you're using windows 8 and having trouble with access denied messages try logging off of your WINDOWS 8 profile CTRL alt delete, and logging on to the admin profile (assuming your setup is like mine).
My setup is working so I'll be grinding away for the next few months or so.