O.K. It seems the problem is that KIX (or something) can't tell if the version is less than, greater than, or equal to. I tried the last suggestion of running a batch file that showed me the version, and if it was less than (or whatever). I expanded on this and tried less than, greater than, equal to, and they all came back and said not less than, not greater than, not equal to . I tried putting <> rather than < or =, but that didn't work. I also tried grabbing the product version rather than file, but came up with the same result. Any other ideas? I also tried the suggestion about the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\LocalPackages
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Products keys, but couldn't see anything to go with on these.