InitInstance gives a "Failed to create empty document" message

Hi,

I have an MFC application that was working, and I'm not sure what I
changed, but now in my InitInstance(), I get the above mentioned error
message, in the line:

    if (!ProcessShellCommand(cmdInfo))
        return FALSE;

And my program bombs out with the return FALSE; line.

After stepping into the functions, I find that it returns FALSE in the
following code segment in ProcessShellCommand()"

    case CCommandLineInfo::FileNew:
        if (!AfxGetApp()->OnCmdMsg(ID_FILE_NEW, 0, NULL, NULL))
            OnFileNew();
        if (m_pMainWnd == NULL)
            bResult = FALSE;
        break;

OnFileNew() triggers the "Failed to create empty document" message.
Stepping into OnFileNew() and then into CDocManager::OnFileNew(), I
see that the call to pTemplate->OpenDocumentFile(NULL) triggers the
message. Stepping into that, I trace it to:

        if (pFrame == NULL)
        {
            AfxMessageBox(AFX_IDP_FAILED_TO_CREATE_DOC);
            delete pDocument; // explicit delete on error
            return NULL;
        }

which means the line "pFrame = CreateNewFrame(pDocument, NULL);" seems
to have created a null frame? I traced it into CreateNewFrame and
found that the conditional

    if (!pFrame->LoadFrame(m_nIDResource,
            WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | FWS_ADDTOTITLE, // default frame styles
            NULL, &context))

succeeded and hence LoadFrame returned NULL(could not create a frame).
I traced it into LoadFrame and found that the conditional

    if (!Create(lpszClass, strTitle, dwDefaultStyle, rectDefault,
      pParentWnd, ATL_MAKEINTRESOURCE(nIDResource), 0L, pContext))

succeeded, and hence Create returned NULL. I tried to trace it into
Create() but it just brought me to the class CComPtrBase in
atlcomcli.h, to this code segment:

    operator T*() const throw()
    {
        return p;
    }

p at this point doesn't seem to be defined "(expression cannot be
evaluated" in the Autos window compared to defined values in the
working version)

I compared the parameters in Create() between the working and non-
working version and can't seem to figure out what's difference. What
does Create() failing mean and how can I solve it?

I've also compared cmdInfo prior to the ProcessShellCommand() call
between a working and non-working version in the Autos window and
could not find any difference between the 2.

Help please?