Hi Thomas,

Here's what late Ed Rauh says of availability of 'Shell.Application' in How do I get the path of special folders from Windows FAQ #16022:

"The Shell.Application object, which was installed as a part of the Active Desktop components, is needed for this functionality. It's there for Win95 OSR 2 v 2.1, Win98, WinME, Win2K and WinXP in various flavors; for WinNT 4.0 or Win95 retail to have it, you must have installed specifically IE 4 or 4.01 with the Active Desktop components at some point; later versions of IE did not contain the enhanced Shell components".

To check if it's registered

oReg = NewObject("Registry", HOME() + "FFC\Registry")
? oReg.IsKey("Shell.Application")

>
>your method works fine on my laptop and my development machine
>(tested on W2K and W98SE2) but fails both on a NT4 WS and
>server machines where something similar needs to be implemented.
>
>oShell = CREATEOBJ('Shell.Application')
>gives me a "class definition not found"
>
>I am not sure whether this is due to some security introduced
>setting or the method itself isn't supported under NT4.
>
>Since the MSDN - KB on which it is probably based (Article ID: Q176792)
>can be found on old MSDN CD's, I tend to believe the first.
>Do you know if your method works under NT4 normally ?
>Some registry keys I can check ?
>