After opening VB6 and getting the New Project screen, I used to
have a history list under the 'Recent' tab.  The history list exists
during the time VB6 is open, but dissappears upon closing VB and then
restarting.

        Have I accidentally unchecked a program wide option somewhere, or
has something external gone wrong???

        I'm going to try re-installing VB on this particular machine.  
It's the only workstation with WinME and I think that's the problem.  I
was looking for something that somebody may have checked/unchecked in the
global setup to take care of this annoyance.

        Have I accidentally unchecked a program wide option somewhere, or
        has something external gone wrong???

I don't think so. I have seen and heard of the history list
disappearing or just showing garbage on the screen. Usually caused by
system crashes or the IDE locking up on you.  I've also heard but not
seen, that having a large number of recent files may itself have
caused the problem you are experiencing.  You might want to check in
the registry to see if anything is there.  The location is at:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Visual Basic\6.0\RecentFiles

Which is the location for the list in VB 6.0.  There are a number of
VBRecent programs on the Internet.  That can remove older project
files.  I found one that provided the code and modified it to my own
liking.  I just changed the appearance a bit and added a horizontal
scrollbar to make long paths visible. It's Called: Display/Remove
Projects from the Visual Basic Recent File List
The original unmodified version can be found at:

http://www.freevbcode.com/ShowCode.Asp?ID=2046

Yours,

Jerome W. Norgren