>further to my whingeing about the compiled exes crashing - a number of you suggested I download and install the sp3, which was a pleasant way to spend the weekend! After 2 complete de/reinstalls I finally took the plunge and reinstalled sp3 last night.

>All I can tell you is that the program is stable enough till you try to come out of it. Then, with 100% consistency (so far) it causes a major windows crash with an error message on the infamous blue screen along the lines of 'this application has caused a fatal error at 0E (or sometimes 0C if that helps) at a variety of addresses. we then have to do a complete cold reboot to recover.

Several of us here on UT reported the same problem with SP3, our whole OSs were fouled up...but an uninstall of VS6, a reinstall, then reinstall of SP3 cleared everything up well, certainly in my case...