>I had had an error message saying I was overwritting newer files copying MSVCRT.DLL and MSVCRT40.DLL in distribution disks.
>
>What task these files perform?

These files are part of the Visual C++ runtime support environment.

>Indeed, are they needed or may I exclude them?

They are needed, and must be present in at least the version distributed with the version of VFP that you are installing; in theory, later versions of these runtimes are supersets of the prior versions. They might be present already on customer systems.

These two .DLLs need to be installed before some OLE .DLLs and .OCX files can register themselves.