Yet another software complaint. Ignoring all the direness that is the SQL Reporting Services Designer, which I really don't think is as easy to use as the one that Access has had for 10 years, I have the install / configuration issue. SSRS wasn't working so I had to manually configure; there's a nice tool provided, but that still led to permissions problems on a config file. So I tried the trusted route of uninstalling and re-installing the reporting services and I find the reason for it not being configured; when installing you get a selection of "Install the default configuration" or "Install but do not configure", the latter of which is selected and the radio buttons grey out. Apparantly the installation thinks "the SQL instance is either not selected or is not a local install", neither of which are correct. It's a local machine and the default instance. I really like the way the error doesn't actually tell you what it thinks the values are, but just tells you they are wrong, when you clearly know they aren't.
Error messages that tell you next to nothing suck.
So do I now have to uninstall the entire SQL product to reinstall and see if it works? Probably. Sigh.