A problem occured while Access was communicating with the OLE serveror ActiveX Control

[Grinder]

A friend is attempting to startup Access 2003, but it fails with
multiple message boxes that report:

"A problem occured while Microsoft Office Access was communicating with
the OLE server or ActiveX Control. Close the OLE Server and restart it
outside of Microsoft Office Access. Then try the operation again in
Microsoft Office Access."

He reports that he has to use the task manager to finally rid himself of
the application.

My apologies for coming to you with hearsay, but it I think I'm in a
better position then him to ask semi-technical questions.

1) Does anyone recognize this as symptomatic of an obvious problem?

I've done some web searches and see that a number of people are having
this type of error, but mainly in triggered by particular datasets or
scripts that they're trying to use. We're doing neither--this happens
at startup of a "clean" Access 2003 install.

2) Is there a startup database, or a list of add-ins that are loaded in
at startup, that we can disable?

Thanks for your consideration of my specific questions and of the
dilemma in general.