What does Visual Studio have to do with HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography?

Question

VS 2010 becomes unresponsive randomly. A look into process monitor shows it waits in a loop on RegQueryValue operation on HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\Defaults\Provider Types\Type 001\Name key. Why does Visual Studio need to do this? Is there a way to get around this? Have tried resetting devenv and stopping Windows Cryptography Services.