I give up - how are parent/child .chm links maintained?

Question

I've been following the letter of the law (help) for three versions now - RH6, RH7, and now RH8 - and I give up.
What is the magical mystery proper way of maintaining parent/child .chm links in RH8???
Current issue: Since converting projects to RH8, when searching in Help the "Location" display for results reverted to older project names - e.g. "Product08" instead of just "Product", or "Installing Product" instead of "Product Install". I finally tracked this down to the Project Settings, which apparently retains the original name of the project file even after the actual project files and .chms were renamed.
The issue is that after updating these settings, recompiling the child projects and then the parent project, the changes are not showing up, and it seems like 4-5 times a year I have to fight RoboHelp to properly show children projects - I'm constantly encountering missing links, failure to display updated content, doubled search results, empty Index files, etc etc etc. Always seemingly triggered by one simple change here or there, without rhyme or reason. I have followed the RH help file instructions for four years now, and I give up pretending that the current system is working on our end.
So, please, someone, in a dumbed down spelled out Idiots Guide for Dummy Tech Writers for RH8, step by excruciating step, how in the (world) do I maintain such links whenever I make a change in a child .chm? Based on earlier advice, our parent child is pretty much barebones and serves mostly as a shell with links to the children, where all the actual content is held. IE our parent rarely needs updating to its own content, usually once a year for the copyright notice we put on the main title page.

Answer 1

Maintaining Manually Edited [MERGE FILES] section of your HHP files.
Important: Although we’ve repeated this procedure successfully, it has not yet been fully put through the hoops by all our authors.  This is still in a test-bed cycle, and we are refining the procedure. This is only a suggestion for anyone who wants to try it.  You should absolutely back up your projects first. Any testing of this procedure must be on a copy. Please use these suggested steps at your own risk.
Good luck!
Karen
Perform the following procedure for each help project in your RoboHelp V9 merged help system.
1.       Delete the help project’s CPD file.
2.       Using Notepad, remove the [MERGE FILES] section from the project’s HHP file.
3.       Using Notepad, remove all <file> entries from the <mergedhelpfiles> section in the project’s XPJ.
4.       Double-click the XPJ file to load the project into RoboHelp 9.
5.       In the TOC pod, add all CHMs that are part of the merged help system, as follows:
a.       Copy all CHMs—except the master (parent) project—into the project’s folder.
b.      In RoboHelp, click the New Merged Project button.
c.       In the Merged Project dialog box, select one of the CHM files, and make sure that its matching HHC file is also selected.
d.      Repeat steps a through c for each CHM file you copied into the project.
6.       Save the project, and generate the HTML help.
7.       From the TOC pod, remove the CHMs you just added. (Do not remove the actual CHM files from the project’s folder.)
8.       Save and generate the HTML help. The [MERGE FILES] section of your project’s HHP file should now contain only the names of the merged CHM files, not the hard-coded paths.