>I have not had vfp 8 for very long time but I noticed that my compiled .exe's (Win 32 executable /COM server (exe)) run on newly installed systems(XP) without benefit of installshield of VFP runtime files. Can't find alot of reference documentaion on this. Can someone point me to an article or clue me in?

Sounds like something else had already installed the runtimes on that system.