Bruce,

Here's what I got back this morning:

My guess would be a version of shdocvw.dll that is relic from win 98SE. A lot of people seem to feel that 'System File Checker Can't be wrong', and replace files that have changed with new IE versions.

On another more technical note, the scripting functions (old OLE Automation) were moved from shdocvw (the IE object) to shdoc401 as a free standing 'COM' object with later versions of IE. I always suspected it was part of that whole 'DOJ / Active Desktop / IE as part of Windows' mess, but that's just my guess. Anyway, another variation on this problem may be some Active Desktop setup issue, but without data on all this, a straight answer is difficult.

You should do a full system find for both of those DLLs and see how many there are and what versions they are.

>>Just reported it in the IE5 MVP NG.
>>
>>>Good to know; I'd assume it was a bug in the upgrade process. Have you reported the problem?
>
>Er, I have some good and bad news.
>
>Bad news: Each time I restart the machine, the same problem returns.
>
>Good news: Now the I have the "regsvr32 shdoc401.dll" in the Run list, I just fire it and the problem disappears again for the session.
>
>But, I guess I'm still looking for a permanent fix...apparently something causes the shdoc401.dll entry to be overwritten each bootup?