David,

Hadn't really explored that angle, so I found a MS KB article on forcing an IE reinstall. Did that, doing a full IE 6.0 reinstall, rebooted, and wham: same problem *smile*

Unless I can figure out what file or class IE is trying to load, it sounds like I am screwed. For now, I am going to try firing up IE the old-fashioned way (just firing up the EXE) and attaching to it via Shell.Application (which still works). I will do this in the event the COM automation fails in a TRY...CATCH.

Any other ideas are still welcome... Thanks for your responses so far!

JoeK