DeViLbOi: if you read my entire post, you'll see that i mentioned i DID copy the MSVCR71.dll to my litestep & system32 folder from my old xp install, but to no avail

litestep does fire up & "work" sort of... all functionality seems ok thus far except one major draw back

in my system tray i get bugger all system icons

for example under my current base install of vista i have 4 icons in my system tray: remove hardware, dell quickset, windows sidebar, alps touch pad, battery meter, network connection & sound volume

when i run litestep, all i get is dell quickset, windows sidebar & alps touch pad

and of course everytime i do a refresh i get the same error relating to MSVCR71.dll & contextmenu-1.0.dll

nope shouldnt matter that you're running it in a VM, strange that i get these results with a fresh install of Vista UE & fresh install of litestep too :/