So I tried refining the installation to make it as painless as possible, and it appears that if you opt for the "Typical" installation of IE6 instead of the minimal one in preparation for installing ChemDraw, it works just as well as installing the Minimal IE6 with separate MDAC and Scripting Host. Of course you get Outlook Express (yecch) and Windows Media Player at the same time, but you can always uninstall those later, as I doubt they are required for ChemDraw. Or you can customize the Minimal installation.