YESSS! made it!
To all you guys who're still having trouble with installation, maybe this summary helps:
1. follow the steps fuseburn posted (this admin and registry stuff)
than:
1 - download and unzip this:
http://www.xlutop.com/buzz/zip/shell2vst.zip
2 - copy the extracted shell2vst.exe into the C:\Program Files\Waves\Waveshells folder (this just makes it easier to use)
3 - drag and drop each "WaveShell-VST x.x.x.dll" onto the shell2vst.exe
4 - that will create a folder C:\Program Files\Waves\Waveshells\Waves that contains all the plugins as DLLs
5 - Cut and paste this new folder into your vstplugins folder.
If there are already any waveshells in the vstplugins folder you should delete it/them.
(NB delete the waveshells placed in vstplugins NOT the ones in Waves\Waveshell otherwise there'll be a conflict).
First I didn't see that new Waves folder shell2.exe creates. But it is there! I don't know if its really necessary to uninstall and reinstall waves before all that. I did and it suddenly worked fine.
good luck!