Joe,

>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*

Persistence is a virtue right? *bg*

>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.

Let's go back to an obvious thing just to be sure. Are you sure you've spelled it right in the code? oie = createobject( "internetexplorer.application" ). Does an instance of the web browser control on a form work for you?

Have you tried doing a regsrv32 shdocvw.dll? In regedit, you can take that GUID in CLSID and search for it, ultimately you'll find an entry that contains the actual DLL name.