csdn右侧菜单不能展开，提示错误automation服务器不能创建对象

Yes, I was one of the testers for the Start Page in Visual Studio 2002 and 2003.  There are a LOT of good reasons we are scrapping it and starting over with a new Start Page for VS 2005. Our redesign certainly takes into account the comments left here and countless other places we've looked for feedback.  You'll see a renewed focus on simplicity and the main purpose of launching your recent projects.  But this post isn't meant to be about the new start page.  This is a brain dump of the known problems I've seen with the existing start page and how you can potentially solve them. 

The "Automation Sever Can't Create Object" error message.

There may be a problem with the installed version of the Windows Scripting component. See KB323885.

Sometimes there are problems with different versions of MSXML being registered on the machine.  The VS.NET start page uses the msxml3 object to render content in the start page.  There have been a few known issues where installs of different versions ( there are a few!) of the msxml object will stomp on the previously installed versions ( link).  Here is how I have fixed it on some machines:

Sometimes this is caused by aggressive anti-virus software that blocks the scripting components from launching.  I talk about this extensively here.

Update: If you are unable to create projects.

I recently helped someone work with support to track down another issue and fix.  Here are some steps that may help your problem. Essentially there are three registry keys that can get in a funky state where they have no owner of thier permissions...

Apparently, the Scripting.FileSystem object could not be accessed by Visual Studio.Net when trying to create a project.   We figured that out by having me use regmon when sharing my desktop and trying to create a project.  There were three keys I couldn't access or change permissions on:  Scripting.Dictionary, Scripting.Encode and Scripting.FileSystemObject.  However, I discovered through regedit that no owner assigned to the keys.  I updated the security permissions after changing the owner and now I can create projects in Visual Studio.Net.

"You must be connected to the internet to use this feature."

The new start page will simply be polling it's online content from RSS feeds, but the old page polls a more proprietary XML standard down from MSDN servers to populate with content. The start page simply does a transform of the XML into the standard it prefers.  We connect to this XML by using the

Try clearing your internet cache.

Try changing your selected help filter and re-loading the page. 

Verify, with your internet connection you can connect to this page and see the XML there. ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/vsdata/vsdata.asp?tab=vs_online_community) If you can't, then there is an issue with your internet connect or firewall/proxy settings. 

We use the "Microsoft.XMLHTTP" object to connect to and pull down this content. There are some issues with some versions of this object that cause it not to work properly through a proxy.  You can see if you have this problem by downloading this file ( www.winisp.net/scooblog/ietest.zip), extracting the results and opening the "test.htm" file.  (You'll have to enable script in the security settings for XP SP2 as it kindly blocks the test for you.) If the results look like the "good.txt" you don't have this problem. If they look like the "bad.txt" you have this problem. The problem is actually with the XMLHTTP object and, as far as I know, the IE team does not yet have a QFE or fix for this.  Hey, check out the developer centers if you want good content. :-)