Thanks very much for the help there. ORCA did work. I did find the whole thing pretty tricky though For the benefit of anyone else trying this in the future: this article kid of helped: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830612[^] but it took this article to tell me that one needs to format the Target as [#] http://bytes.com/topic/net/answers/411545-clicking-created-shortcut-triggers-reinstallation[^] I would have hoped it was easier, but not surprised at the Microsoft Magic. Think I need to look for a better deployment tool

Shame you never got an answer on this one. I have the same issue. I thought I must be doing something wrong, but can't work out what it is. Did you ever work it out? Thought it maybe because I made the shortcut to the Primary Output of xyz Project, but your post said you made it to the exe