Mike,

>I thought the registry.vcx that comes with VFP supports only REG_SZ type values. As to the .REG file approach, this would seem to be OK, except that I would certainly not want to be restricted to Win2K and later.

Right. I forgot about that. Rick has registry class at http://west-wind.com/wwvfppd.htm that can handle this

>The entry for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\VFPODBC\Q326568 seems superfluous, or do you have some reason to think this is really necessary?

I dunno but if you are adding already 2 keys why not to add third?

>Do you suppose that a very simple piece of logic could be constructed to perform this patch with straight API calls and no dependencies on the version of Windows?

I would think so but it would depends on the registry differences between Win2k and earlier versions.

>
>I do appreciate your help, and really don't wish to impose on your time. It's hard to believe that no one has already worked this out, and a bit disappointing that MS didn't supply a decent patch in the first place. Surely with their much-vaunted concerns about security, Microsoft could have made it a lot easier for people not to inadvertently propagate this gaping security hole when distributing their own applications.
>

No problem. After thinking this over, running MS patch in post setup sounds better and better to me. :)