line 157 is in fact where the traceback says the failure is: File "autoStart.py", line 241, in test File "wmib.pyc", line 157, in ? File "win32com\client\__init__.pyc", line 73, in GetObject File "win32com\client\__init__.pyc", line 88, in Moniker com_error: (-2147221020, 'Invalid syntax', None, None )