When the ActivEdit server-side file (activedit.cfm, ActivEdit.inc, etc) fails to load with an Object not supported error message, one possible explanation is registry corruption caused by another application.
The following, run from the command line will unregister the native Windows ActiveX editing control and reregister it. The same may be necessary for triedit.dll in the same directory and in some cases where programs overwrite ocx or dlls, refreshing these files from the Windows disk would be required. It has always been very bad practice to overwrite dlls or change their registry settings, but it is still done by some software vendors.
A hint that this problem may exist is when only one or a few client machines recieve the Object not supported error when loading ActivEdit.
C:\%Windows%\System32\regsvr32.exe /u C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Triedit\dhtmled.ocx
C:\%Windows%\System32\regsvr32.exe C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Triedit\dhtmled.ocx
09/08/04 - Additional notes concerning SP2 for Windows XP
SP2 installed without Outlook Express un-registers dhtmled.ocx, but fails to re-register it.
regsvr32.exe no longer accepts a filepath to the target. Change to the directory containing dhtmled.ocx before running regsvr32.
Here is an alternative method contributed by a non-technical ActivEdit user.
1. Go into My Computer, and open the folder with the Triedit "...dhtmled.ocx" and "...triedit.dll" files. 2. Click Start-Run. Type regsvr32 (space) and then drag the file you want to register from Explorer onto the Start-Run box. 3. If it succeeds, there will be a message box saying registration succeeded, otherwise the message box will tell you it failed with some uninterpretable COM error code. If it fails, you have a corrupt file, or you have got the file name wrong.