I am replying to myself...after some time on the phone with Microsoft tech support, which was really excellent in this case. The "access violation" error I was got when installing was one of those misleading error messages. The error was being generated because on my system one of the dlls was a newer version than the one on the VFP CD. I had had a previous installation w/SP 3 which had of course updated the dlls.

You can set a log switch when installing : f:setup /log c:\log1.txt [check doc or w/ms for exact syntax if this doesn't work] which is extremely helpful when diagnosing an installation error. After determining which dll was causing this, and registering it manually to ensure it was not corrupted, it was possible to delete it, remove the fox related registry keys, and then proceed to a successful installation.

Carlie