[Unable to Install [i've read the FAQ & .net thread]]

Make sure you always reboot after installing/repairing anything to do with the .NET Framework. That should probably solve the ridiculous times.

That would explain it, thanks. I had just installed several updates, including one to the .NET framework.

[Unable to Install [i've read the FAQ & .net thread]]

i've just repaired the .NET Framework 2.0+3.0 then tried the install again - as i'm writing this the installer is running but it seems to have stuck on "Optimizing Performance for your system" it's been doing it for about 5-7 minutes now... is this normal?

On a lower end system, especially with a brand new (or repaired, etc.) installation of .NET, 5-7 minutes is perfectly normal.

Incidentally, what counts as a "lower end system" for the purposes of this software? It took the 3.20a installer about twenty-five minutes to finish optimizing, running on a 2000 GHz 64-bit Athlon with 1GB RAM. No other programs were running until the last five or ten minutes, when I loaded Firefox to check to see if this was a known bug in the alpha! (It has finished now and the program is running fine, I'm just curious as to whether this is anomalous.)