I know I'm right! ;) Anyways... the original problem was
fixed by first starting vfp by "vfp -R" which restores
the registry settings. Then service pack 3 found the
vfp installation and updated it.

>>BTW - There is a service pack 3 for both vs97 and vs6.
>
>Afdter thinking on this a moment, you may be right. I don't recall an SP3 for VS5 but that doesn't mean there wasn't one.