I'll put your two cents in the fish bowl with the rest of the pennies...
Well, looks like the problem is my computer. Search my HD for *.CHM files, and found quite a few. Couldn't open any of them, and got the same error message. So went to the Microsucks website, seems they decided that executiable-compressed-HTML-help files are a security risk. So, guessing that one of their late-night updates sodimized my computer. They gave a couple of work arounds involving screwing around with the registery. Kind of funny, the cautions, warnings, '..take no responsiablity..' stuff was considerably more in depth.
Wondering how long ago they crippled my computer. I'm not a huge reader of the Help menu, mostly when I can't find something myself (where'd they hide the function).
So, guessing I'll either have to find an alternate way of opening these files, or wait until somebody puts up an uncompressed version. I tried everything I've got installed, so need to do some searching for a utility.