Thanks for the reply,

Today I tried it on three different boxes.

(Thinkpad T-20, Win 2000, Excel 97)
(Compaq EN-1000 SFF, Win 2000, Excel 97)
(Compaq EVO 1.7Ghz, Win 2000, Excel 2002)

It runs on the Excel 2002 box. Dies consistently on the
other two - never in the same place.

Pretty sure now it isn't just a bad company standard-load.
All three of these images were developed independently due
to the differences in the machines.