Thanks, Megan! I've calmed down now.
The optomux stuff caught me by surprise; I considered that
stuff part of the LV<x.x> driver install rather than the toolkit
stuff that I knew was problematic. But what do I know
I am now alive again; I had to worry my way through the
report generation toolkit stuff again for mystical reasons I do not
understand (I only re-installed 7.1 and the r.g. toolkit installed
itself in National Instruments>LabVIEW>vi.lib>utility instead of
in the LabVIEW7.1 directory). Once I figured that out, it was
fairly easy to go back and move things around per the
instructions lying around in the knowledge base and former
discussions. LV 7.1 is now fully alive, as far as I can tell.
I now have a nice collection of expensive LV 8.0 software which
is not installed anywhere; I figure I'll budget a quiet week to install,
port my application, figure out how to set up my RT app in
the "new" way, re-create the build/install script that doesn't port
into the new build environment, and archive away the 7.1
stuff and not look back...
Or pack the whole 7.1 system in a box, computer and all (just
in case I ever need it) and buy a new computer for 8.0. Computers
are cheap.

Bob