thanks for the clarification and suggestion. i've tried to use imgrep and fontrep and while imgrep seems to work, fontrep throws an "io error 2" error no matter which firmware upgrade file (taken from the touch screen setup or prontoedit installation directories) i use. i.e. :

C:\FontRep>fontrep.exe e RC5000.exe old

IO error 2 when RC5000.exe

i'm running this on vista and i've also tried running it in every compatibility mode available, all of which have the same results.