Friedrich,

I almost reloaded the 3.1 runtime this morning but had checked the version numbers and what I had local (3.1.4000.2435) matched what was available so I wrote it off as redundant.

I did as you suggested and removed and re-downloaded the 3.1 runtime and recompiled. The sample project now works. Obviously I must have had some sort of corruption of my 3.1 runtime (a bit worrisome). I'm not sure why the 3.1 runtime worked when single file deployed vs not working with web enable deploy but we've spent enough time on this now and the solution is definite enough.

I just finished recompiling a reasonably large project that I had the original problem with and it is correct as well.

Thank you for your help,

Jim