>I've been reading about Win2K plans to "locally" (i.e., outside the main System dir) install runtime DLLs for a "parallel" standard. Not quite sure exactly how it would work, whether each app directory would have a set of DLLs, or whether there would be separate System sub-directories for DLLs. From articles, I surmise all VS tools would be included. Anyone have details on this? I guess this would begin in VS7...

That's my understanding. It's supposed to help with "dll hell." I've done this for quite a while anyway on some custom apps.