>I'm almost 100% sure that the scope of a static (VB Shared) class is confined to the application domain. I can't find anything that suggests otherwise and, logically, if that were not the case then programming with it would be a nightmare. C# documentation actually says that, under the hood, a static class is just a regular class with only static methods and a private constructor - i.e. all the compiler is really doing when you declare a class as static is preventing instantiation.
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>From the above, it appears that the exception you are getting is thrown by the existing application whilst the new instance is being constructed rather than the other way around. Don't know whether it is relevant but what, exactly, is (or should be) the object that is not found and where and when would it normally be instantiated ?

Yes, that's what I think as well. The ongoing instance seems to be affected by that, or at least, it gives that impression. Basically, on the startup of the application, I load the data dictionary in the shared object, thus in App.oApp.Tables. For some kind of reason, when a new instance is loaded, during the initializtion, this seems to affect the ongoing hit still using the old instance as some references to whatever is under App.oApp.Tables are lost.