Hey, I figured it out (only took about 5 hours)...
I usually use "//-----" as a header for a block of functions that belong together. One time I messed up and wrote "//******", which should be OK but IE interpreted as beginning a comment. So nothing after that statement worked, and even stuff before it seemed unreliable at best.
I'm trying to decide if debugging with IE is more or less useful than a Ouija board.
-Karen.