bill - 7:53 am on Jun 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

Welcome to WebmasterWorld stooper101.

FrontPage was discontinued several years ago. Maybe you might like to take a look at FP's successor, Expression Web 2.

1) I understand FP writes it's own .htaccess

No. FP has never done anything with .htaccess at all. That must be your host.

2) I am pretty sure I can remove all the _vti folders. What about _private?

The folders beginning with an underscore are only for FP. They can be deleted if you're not using FP. If you republish with FP those folders will be recreated.