I made a simple program for debugging this, the only line of code is:

Dim oWord = GetObject("", "Word.Application")

The exe is on a network drive. When I run it from an XP machine, it works fine, but when I run it from a win2003 server it gives a security error. It wouldnt work on the XP machine until I went into the .NET config wizard in the control panel and set the trust level to "Full" for the local intranet. I did this on the 2003 server also, but it still has problems. Both machines are up to date with .net framework 1.1 . The XP machine has office 2003, the server has office 2002.

The same program will run fine from a local drive on the 2003 server. Also, if a put the command in a vbs script and run it from the network drive, it runs fine on the 2003 server. So it looks like the problem lies between .net framework and server 2003