After a HD crash I bought/installed XP-Home and set about re-installing my hardware and software. My last step was to do VFP7 and all of its parts, incluing SP1.
All of the VFP7 parts included MSDE (the 2000 version, I believe). When I couldn't find the BOL for SQL Server I snooped the web some and came upon a SP2 for SQL Server 2000, one download of which was for the 'desktop' version. I downloaded it and it apparently installed successfully.

When I went looking for BOL I came up dry and SergeyB her provided a download site. I eventually got the thing "installed" but couldn't get "it" to start up. I could view each piece of the information, but not the "book" as a whole. I came across a statement in the README for BOL that stated: "If you install the downloadable version of SQL Server 2000 Books Online on a computer that does not have SQL Server 2000 installed, double-clicking the file Sql80xx.col will not open Books Online.". Well, I got what they say - NOTHING when I d-click on Sql80en.col. It issues some warning, then I get to click 'use IE' and then IE starts up and the page is blank!@#$@!#
So I can only conclude that "SQL Server 2000" and MSDE are considered as being different things as far as BOL startability is concerned.

Hardly tested... I seem to have found that d-clicking on "startsql.chm" in the books install dir. brings me close.

Does it make sense that BOL would deliberately be made unavailable for MSDE-only installs? Doesn't to me.

Just FYI really.