>I think my next step will be to manually load the vfp8 runtimes onto NT, and see if a vfp8 exe will run okay. Then we know the trouble is with ISX, and not NT. If not, there may something NT needs, like the Active Desktop you mention.

Update: Vfp8 exes run fine on NT4, with manual runtime-file copying to the System folder.

I think my next choice is between:

1) Whether to try to get the ISX install for Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VFP...runtime location to work (which it doesn't currently under ISX). This could be simple or difficult, no idea...

2) Or to simply have ISX copy the vfp8 runtimes to the NT system directory. This may be easiest, and since the NT users will be moving to XP within a couple months, I don't care too much if the configuration is not "anti-DLLHell." A few more months of Dll Hell on NT should be fine <g>