Another thing that will help is running Norton's Windoctor in the Utilities package. You would be amazed at the number of ActiveXCOM registry entries that dangle, shortcuts that aren't, and other kinds of mess that you get even doing a clean, recommended setup of Windows. Shortcuts are more of a nuisance, but -any- damaged or unlinked entries with the Active X controls or the COM libraries can and will cause you major trouble. Including causing programs that -have- no registry entries to crash, or not start at all.