"as I said in my first post, that is just the version of the Frontend (i.e. the windows GUI aka "Graphical User Interface", which is there so you don't have to use DOS commands). But the version of the frontend is different from the version of the actual FLAC encoding. The next time that you encode or decode FLAC files, pay attention to the DOS window that pops up, and that will tell you which version of FLAC you have installed."
I have searched the web every way I can think of, and flac frontend always comes up with v1.2.1 as the only "new" version to dl, although as I mentioned it does say v1.7.1 in the about box, but as you mentioned the dos prompt still says 1.2.1

? If there is in fact a v1.7.1 that you can dl by itself, plese point me to it, becasue as far as i can tell it doesn't exist by itself, without first having 1.2.1.