Thanks Friedrich,

I hereby declare that I did not properly read the helpful reply which did in fact point me at the right place. :-|

Anyway. The file that is pending is expsrv.dll (part of VBA DAO system).
In the SB8 Installation script it is set as Check Version/Date, and therefore should not need to be installed.

BUT... (maybe this is the problem).
Source file (to be installed): date: 02/14/2008 vers: 6.0.72.9590
Target file (already installed): 07/14/2009 vers: 6.0.72.9589
ie. Date newer but version older

Target file is already installed in both Win\System32\ and \sysWOW64\

Despite me having run the install a dozen times (and restarted), this file has NOT been replaced in either target location. But is shown as pending.

Maybe you can guess at what is getting confused.
(I probably do not need to install this file anyway -- historic reasons why it's there -- and also I will try changing source file Date to after 7/14/2009 to see if that fixes everything).