Problems installing visual studio on Windows 8 laptop: hangs on "Applying Microsoft .NET framework 4.5.1"

I'm having a really hard time installing Visual Studio on my Windows 8 laptop. It hangs every time on "Applying: Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.1" for roughly a half hour, then spews out an error message (different every time). One of the error messages just says "Fatal error during installation" and another just says "Asia."

I've updated windows as far as it will go, I've tried deleting the contents of %temp%, I've made sure I'm an administrator and am using "Run as Administrator" on the installer. I've tried disabling my antivirus. All to no avail.

the log file was to big to include in this post, but I think these are all the relevant lines.

I couldn't include the entire log file since It is too big, but these lines look like they might be relevant:

[1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:12:39]i000: MUX: ExecutePackageBegin PackageId: netfxfullredist_43 [1D40:13E4][2014-06-03T14:12:39]i301: Applying execute package: netfxfullredist_43, action: Install, path: C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\5934DD101414BBC0B7F1EE2780D2FC8B9BEC5C4D\packages\dotNetFramework\NDP451-KB2858728-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe, arguments: '"C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\5934DD101414BBC0B7F1EE2780D2FC8B9BEC5C4D\packages\dotNetFramework\NDP451-KB2858728-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe" /q /norestart /KeepAUPaused /ChainingPackage vs_professional /log C:\Users\Michael\AppData\Local\Temp\dd_vs_professional_20140603140128_161_netfxfullredist_43.log.html' [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:15:00]i000: MUX: ExecuteError: Package (netfxfullredist_43) failed: Error Message Id: -2145124329 ErrorMessage: [1D40:13E4][2014-06-03T14:15:00]e000: Error 0x80240017: Process returned error: 0x80240017 [1D40:13E4][2014-06-03T14:15:00]e000: Error 0x80240017: Failed to execute EXE package. [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:15:00]e000: Error 0x80240017: Failed to configure per-machine EXE package. [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:15:00]i000: MUX: Installation size in bytes for package: netfxfullredist_43 MaxAppDrive: 0 MaxSysDrive: 1154531328 AppDrive: 0 SysDrive: 942080 [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:15:00]i000: MUX: Return Code:0x80240017 Msi Messages:-2145124329 Result Detail:0 Restart:None

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[1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:19:53]i000: MUX: Apply Complete: Disk Space Used in bytes for Installation: MaxAppDrive: 0 MaxSysDrive: 1897152512 AppDrive: 0 SysDrive: 292343808 [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:19:53]i000: MUX: Free Disk Space after install: SystemDrive C:\ 122940878848 bytes AppDrive C:\ 122940878848 bytes [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:19:53]i000: MUX: Go to Finished page. [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:19:53]i000: MUX: Format Message Failed: 317 [1B00:1BFC][2014-06-03T14:19:53]i399: Apply complete, result: 0x80240017, restart: None, ba requested restart: No