Evan
Thanks for that. I am getting closer to sorting things out and seem to have only one problem left.
For the benefit of others that may stray into reinstal SP3 problems in the future the following things may be useful.

a) "Cannot find VS6 components etc."
Check out SP3 Readme file under 'Refreshing the common directory setting'
(thanks John K).This works OK if your last VS6 instal had been completely successful which mine was NOT. It seems the ADD/REMOVE routine won't allow maintenace mode unless it finds a valid instal file somewhere, I recall it being an .STF file.

b)Getting a Valid Instal file
The trick there was to first instal VS6 without selecting any checkBoxes and then let the wizard instal nothing. After that I instaled each package including an errant Interdev6 but this allowed a) above to work out.




>>Getting to the question - has anyone been able to get help from Microsoft. If so how did you do it ?
>
>Have you tried to call the US support numbers directly? Perhaps they might take your call.
>
>I see you have posted your problem here twice with not much response. I would rebuild Windows and install the product from scratch.