My main issue with the version numbers is that the program in question gets installed in a directory named after its version number and registry settings get placed in a subkey named after its version number, however it does not remove subkeys from previous versions so I can't test for a subkey. I also can't go by product ID as they change the CLSID with each release. thinking about that made me realize that my approach above won't work anyway as the uninstall registry key where I can get a version number will only contain a version number from that specific version (CLSID). I went back to using Equals and added a second condition to check for containing the other version number and all seems well.
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thank you for your response.