I had that problem too. I was trying to make a child theme for Twenty Ten. I Named the Parent theme in my child theme like;
Template: Twenty Ten
And it asked me to install Twenty Ten. Then I found out that if i change the Template name to;
Template: twentyten
It recognized the parent theme. But I have no clue why, because the css stylesheet of the Twenty Ten theme calls the theme “Twenty Ten”. Anybody know why?