[Addendum...] Following my original post, firstly, apologies - I should have mentioned that I'm trying to build the regex example using Visual Studio 8 Express Edition (i.e. VC++2005). Also, I've got some more information....
Apart from those libs that I mentioned in my original post, I've found a whole bunch of libs beginning with "libboost-regex-vc80-" and ending with these suffixes:-
mt-1_40.lib mt-gd-1_40.lib mt-s-1_40.lib mt-sgd-1_40.lib s-1_40.lib
I guess these must be the static link libs. Anyway, I've discovered that if I link to any lib that ends in "mt-1_40.lib" I can build my app and launch it successfully as long as I build in Release mode. But in Debug mode, the app either doesn't launch - or if it does launch, it gives the unhandled exception that I described earlier.
Here's the thing, with VC++ you absolutely must link to the library variant that was built with the exactly the same runtime options as your code - that's why there are so many VC++ binaries supplied. If you don't do that then your code will crash. Now for the good news: Boost.Regex will automatically select the correct library variant to link against, you don't need to do anything, and you shouldn't explicitly link against any of those libraries. Just make sure that the directory containing the libraries is in your library search path (under properties->linker->Additional Library Directories). HTH, John.