apache 1.3 & Includes & Parsing EXECCGI

[zanery]

i have been working on apache 1.3 and i have not been able to get the include directive to work properly. If i create this :
# To use server-parsed HTML files

AddType text/html .html
AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .html

the "exec cgi = "" --> works! but on some of the 100 or so vhosts i have, some of tehm come up with a download screen, it which it will not open the index.html, but strangly it will open .htm's.
So i need to know how to get Includes to work properly without having to tell people that the .shtml will only be good for counters.

I have it in my <Directory> to allow includes and ExecCGI in the web domains root. Is there something I am missing?

Please HElp

thanks