I have a couple portable installs when I insert a single new track in an empty project of one of them it shows as track 1... as expected but on the other one, it shows as track 2... is there some setting I'm missing? really wierd so what I'm saying is on the problem one, there never is a track 1 Oh wait... seems like the Heda VIP Track Inspector which I use becomes track 1... but that is not good

Hidden track (both TCP and MCP) in a default project template perhaps?

yes... it is exactly that... a hidden track used by VIP Track Inspector... have posted to Heda about it... it would be nice to avoid that numbering issue so that created tracks do start with 1.... the numbering offset can get confusing at times maybe the VIP Inspector could somehow have track number 1000 instead of 1....

I don't think Reaper will let you add track 1000 unless you have 1-999 already.

yeah prolly not but maybe the dev's could let us have track 0 for Heda to use