First of all, make sure you are distrubuting the VFP7 HTML Support library with your executable. The reason it works as an app is that you are probably running that from foxpro and it knows where the support files are.

I've found using the Html help with foxpro tends to be a bit quirky. Make sure all of your file names match up. Even match the case. For instance I was having a problem where the help wouldn't work from foxpro, but the chm worked fine stand-alone. I named a file "Toolbar.htm" and the topic id was "ToolBar" so it wouldnt work. Note the Caps "B".

I'm running XP, my developer machine stores the required help files under "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VFP"

I think there are 3 or 4 files required, i'm sure someone here can tell you exactly which ones are needed, if you have trouble.