Page Cannot be displayed due to msxml3.dll (0x800C0005)

My Code which used to work all along for years has recently been acting up
<%
    option explicit
   
    Dim RefPage, objXMLHTTP, HTMLPage
    RefPage = Request.QueryString("ref")
    if Len(RefPage) = 0 or not Left(RefPage,7) = "http://" then
          response.write "<font face=verdana size=2>Invalid reference page - " & RefPage & "</font>"
          response.end
    end if
    Set objXMLHTTP = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
          objXMLHTTP.Open "GET", RefPage, False
          objXMLHTTP.Send
          HTMLPage = objXMLHTTP.responseText
    Set objXMLHTTP = Nothing
    %>

What I am trying to do here is just merely grab TEXT from my own webpage and display as TEXT for Printing purposes only/


Error Type:
msxml3.dll (0x800C0005)
The system cannot locate the resource specified.

I have searched Google... and found very few similar comments, but hardly any solution. I also know that similar query was done here but not with the same server screenscraping issue.

thks
Sal