license server down or not responding -96,7

was getting an error like "license server down or not responding -96,7" when trying to get ArcGIS to run on a Vista machine. Seems like the problem was that since the host name could not be set (I could not browse to the license server and therefore it could not be set through the ArcGIS Administrator dialog) the host's license file wasn't validating (although the machine I was setting up could ping the host). I got around this by setting all registry entries = "Not_Set" (actually were "@Not_Set") to the name/port of my license server