Vista - Can't invoke IE8 anymore

Please note this is a cross-post from microsoft.public.internetexplorer.beta:

I've just installed IE8Beta2 and now can no longer instantiate IE through
VBScript with the line:
Set objIE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")

This hangs for a while and then I get the error "ActiveX component can't
create object: 'InternetExplorer.Application'".

At the same time, an event (ID 10010) appears in the System Log from source
DCOM: "The server {0002DF01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} did not register
with DCOM within the required timeout."

I'm actually getting at IE as a way to get data onto the clipboard:
objIE.Navigate("about:blank")
objIE.Document.parentWindow.clipboardData.SetData "Text", strPaste
objIE.Quit

Has something changed in how I have to do this?
Thanks for any suggestions.

Best wishes,

Andrew

This too is cross-posted:

I think I've got to the bottom of this.
The script was running in the context of a local user account which had not
been logged into interactively since I installed IE8. Of course when I
actually logged into that account, I saw the little box that appears at the
top-left of the screen to do with IE setup prior to the desktop appearing.
Then next time I tried my script as before, the error no longer appeared but
instead, invoking the IE object caused a first-run type of "configure IE"
window to appear so I had to answer its questions to stop it appearing each
time. Now my script is behaving!
Any observations on these symptoms are welcome!