Kevin, folks ...

>I made the mistake up upgrading to IS Express 3.5, and since
>then we've had a multitude of problems. Most seem to be associated
>with registration of vaarious components. In a few cases, some files
>did not get installed.

This sounds very much like the instability problem with both 3.03 (VFP's ISE) and 3.5. This is a recognised issue and I understand is addressed in the 3.54 update (which cannot be applied to our 3.03).

A number of people have suggested using Inno and I won't dissuade anybody from this course. However, I am sticking with the Windows Installer service for a number of reasons - heavy use of system components, holding out for patches etc - and have now started evaluating ISE4 Beta.

I wasn't able to convert my project, but was quite happy to use the wizard to recreate it. I was impressed by the dependency scanner which suggested extra merge modules to include, although puzzled as to why the RichText MSM wasn't available (I added it from my own collection.)

The VFPHTMLHELP.MSM supplied was of a later date (25 Oct 2001) than MS provided in VPF7 SP1, and correctly installed the help helper files in the VFP Common Files folder (hooray).

So far so good. I will continue to test and will not mind buying this one if it continues to behave itself. Oh yes - and it promises to install patches at last.

Hopes this helps
John Burton