Henry,
The promise and curse of .DLLs is that if they are already "running", then a new process wouldn't have to fire up another copy. So if the user has another copy of say MSVCR70.DLL already running, then it won't use your local version even if it is the right one (e.g. newer). (I currently have two tasks using MSVCR70.DLL, and one isn't VFP!) I believe the order of checking on DLLs is:
1) Running
2) Registered
3) System Path
4) Current directory

We usually use a generic install routine that installs just the VFP runtimes and our "normal" support DLLs and OCXs. We have one for VFP 5.0 SP3, VFP 6.0 SP5 (both using the appropriate setup wizard), and VFP 7.0 SP1 and VFP 8.0 (using ISE). At most they install a dummy .EXE, and verify/create a consistent multi-application VFP working directory.

Rick