The plot thickens. The fellow who approached me with this in the first place maintains that he was using IE8 on both a Win 7 box and an XP box. Good, usable results files downloaded with the XP system, and bloated unmanageable files on the Win 7 box.

He bought a Win 7 box to progress with his project, but instead it's stopped the project dead in its tracks. He's still got the XP box, but the future is with Win 7, so that's what he'd prefer to use. Understandable, I believe.