I've been using the code below to initialize COM correctly in a threaded ZServer. Without something like this, COM objects are unlikely to be thread safe, and COM itself may deadlock. It should also avoid any CO_E_NOTINITIALIZED errors when creating COM object. Has anyone else noticed this kind of problem before? Relative to alpha 4, add "import zcom; zcom.init()" in the midde of z2 py, "import zcom; zcom.start_of_another_zope_thread()" as the first line of __init__ in ZServerPublisher.py, and the module zcom.py as below. I hope this helps, Toby Dickenson """ COM support for Zope. This module initializes COM. Nothing more. Author: Toby Dickenson """ # We have to use MTA threads since it is possible that a variable # referring to a COM object might be used by multiple threads. After # this, COM will take care of all concurrency issues automatically. import sys COINIT_MULTITHREADED = 0 def init(): """Call this in the main application thread. It determines whether COM support is available, and imports the pythoncom module for the first time. The first import of pythoncom triggers some 'convenient' magic, so we get that over with too.""" # Set the value in sys module that is used by pythoncom # when first imported sys.coinit_flags=COINIT_MULTITHREADED try: import pythoncom except ImportError: pass else: assert COINIT_MULTITHREADED==pythoncom.COINIT_MULTITHREADED # This thread is now registered with COM as an MTA def start_of_another_zope_thread(): """Call this at the start of every thread that enters Zope.""" pythoncom=sys.modules.get('pythoncom',None) if pythoncom: pythoncom.CoInitializeEx(COINIT_MULTITHREADED) # This thread is now part of the MTA