I have yet to see FRED install without any technical
glitches. Thats the
 main issue I have with FRED. It does not work cleanly out of the box. Even
 the bootable cdroms have issues. 
I would rebut the above statement. I have never had an issue getting
fred to install and work correctly.  My documentation is pretty sound I
thought.
I am willing to assist anyone get FRED working.
I have designed a front-end that works with fred on a basic level for
registrars.
--julian