Thanks for response. Yes, reset profile, and have now fully removed profile and created a new one. No difference. There are no styles referenced for my Admin profile either. I can see all the styles in C:\Program Files (x86)\ArcGIS\Desktop10.3\Styles (554 files, app 290MB). No I did not remove any 3rd party stuff. Possible issue is that I do some VBA Programming for Access databases. If I try to reference the 3.6 DAO reference library from within my VBA console in Access, I get a conflict message. But I can create mdb databases which is what the ESRI page I cited requests a User to do, and if I register the dll as requested, I do not get an error.
thanks again