(snip)
>Yes I am using the following; SHDocVw.ShellWindows and SHDocVw.InternetExplorer. It just seems that they are not always dependable. I was hoping there was a .NET framework way to do it that would be more bullet-resistant ;}
>

Joe,

Sounds like we're talking about the same thing in two different languages. I'm curious how you've found it to be undependable, because at this moment I'm debugging some flaky C5 errors in a loop that repeatedly traverses the collection of Explorer windows, waiting to detect a certain path. Specifically, the line that bombs is:

shellwpath = m.IEobj_arg.document.folder.self.path

where I know that m.IEobj_arg is a valid reference to a Shell Explorer window with a well-defined path. The error doesn't occur on the first execution, but soon into a loop that runs the same statement against the same IE object. Even if I use type() to validate the expression, it bombs with a C5. My suspicion is that this may have something to do with how long one can safely hold on to and reuse various types of COM object references, even though they still should be valid, but this is just a preliminary guess.

If you know of any specific Shell.Application problems or have any tips about using it, I'd be interested to hear them.

Mike