It took me nearly a half hour just to get this far since I couldn't comment without login, and I couldn't login because my old id must have expired, and then the origina discussion wouldn't let me comment directly on their post, but finally I can say "thank you" to x3sw for posting this same question and a working solution.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Registry edit worked...of course at first it didn't and I didn't know why and then after some investigation I realized that one of the quotation marks was missing and ~viola~, like magic Windows 7 would finally recognize Reader as a viable option for opening PDFs.
