ive been using 18 series chips fine without it installed, I dont have my orginal software anymore it and alot of other stuff was lost in a tornado 2 years ago, all ive got is some backup software, I guess i can go and try to find a copy online but as i can program chips now fine i see no reason to. Ive been programming the 18 series chips fine, I have never installed any other software, just microcode studio and PBP, i did install MPLAB and microbasic but when i try to run mplab it gives me a dll error, and im not familiar with microbasic code, i like pbp code better.