>It has to be done in the background, on a server.
I can't help you with the snapshots but I'ld stay away from automating IE on a server.

I've build some data gathering spiders on IE, and while problems from memory consumption or stability are not a big factor anymore today compared to IE4, MS still warns that IE is not supposed to run server side.

Put it in it's own box <g>.

my 0.02 EUR

thomas