Just a thought - the Small Search Input Box is a SharePoint Delegate control. That is, you could specify another control with a *lower* sequence number in a Feature, and when activated that Feature would 'replace' the control already provided. In fact, if memory serves, SharePoint already does that with the Small Search Input Box. Just that way, you wouldn't have to edit a standard Feature, and you could easily roll this out across multiple servers/site collections, etc.. See : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms463169.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms470880.aspx

Andy, you're absolutely right.: E.g. the Search Server Express 2008 has 3 definitions of the SmallSearchInputBox, the lowest with a Sequence number of 25. So installing a new one with a lower sequence number using a Feature is definitely the "right" way to do it. I was working on test machine and simply interested in confirming that the "bug" was not caused by a wrong setting in our software ;-) Because of the quick turn-around time I prefer modifying the SharePoint definition (and iisreset) over writing/modifying/deploying a feature. But again, in production one should go the way you described.

Aye, that's the way I do it too - make it work, then make it repeatable - at least as far as pages and web part configurations go! But it's worth knowing about the second step - too many times have I found systems that other consultants have just changed things directly.

I'd say it's a fairly common "Beginners" mistake, as the overall concepts to features and deployments seem to be such a big mountain that it is tempting to do the quick fix ...but come the third time of making all the manual modifications again (e.g. after a reinstall) then all of a sudden features make a whole lot'a sense :-) I do not envy your situation as a consuiltant in this scenario: that can easily cost you a lot of time to identify the cause of the non-standard behaviour, which the customer is reluctant to pay for :-|