I’ve downloaded a vst instrament (oatmeal) and when I pulled up renoise it wasn’t in the instrument settings> vst intrument properties drop box like kore and ez drummer are. I need a little bit of insight on how to use oatmeal with renoise.
maybe you need to rescan the vst(i) folder again in the preferences? You put the oatmeal.dll in the correct folder, right? 
yep that worked thanks for your time!
(what is the correct folder though?)
I don’t think there is a “right” folder - I think its understood that really you can create a folder anywhere and put your vst’s in it and that’s fine. Not the most organised, but so long as you point Renoise in the right place…that said:
Which operating system are you using?
If your using Windows 7, take a quick look at This Post. By putting your VST folder on your data partition, or in a public or home folder, you can avoid getting the errors from synthedit plugins (Basslane, for example).
On the other hand, I don’t recall XP being so fickle by default so if you really wanted to bury them in your Program Files or System Folders I don’t think it would complain 