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Question:

ActiveX registration issues

Oct 14 '14 at 16:03

What would prevent a person logged into Windows as an administrator from registering the Chilkat ActiveX DLL's? We are receiving more and more tech support questions regarding this issue. Has Microsoft changed the way security works in some versions of Windows or have they released some Windows updates that change how security handles DLL registration?


Accepted Answer

I have solved some problems with registration dll with this:

http://www.chilkatforum.com/questions/5748/loadlibrarychilkatax-950-win32dll-failed-application-configuration-is-incorrect

Hope this helps


Answer

First, it is very difficult to know what is wrong without some kind of error message or error code. If you have this information, please supply it.

Second, why are your users manually registering DLLs anyway? It seems a bit unusual. Does your software not have an installation package?

Other Questions:


Answer

We are software company so we understand how DLL's are registered for our software. We use Installshield and it handles the registrations of the DLL's. But they do not register for some users who are administrators. We even did a Remote Assistant session with one user and could manually register the DLL's. This is a security issue with Windows but we do not understand what is causing the problem.


Answer

We have a large user-base (20K plus users) and have been distributing our product for 9 years. Only recently (in the past few months) has this issue been reported by some users. So if its not a Windows security issue, what else could it be? That is why we logged this question here.

Installshield does not create a log or report any errors after the install completes. But as soon as the user tries run our software, the DLL's cannot be accessed as though they were never registered. CREATOBJECT() simply cannot find them in the registry.

The Chilkat DLL's are saved in the same folder as our software (as suggested by Chilkat Software).

We do not ship our software with any DLL's other than the 5 Chilkat DLL's in question.

Does anyone have a suggestion or thought as to why only some users are now experiencing this issue? From our point of view something has changed with Windows security or an external program is affecting access to the users registry.


Answer

No common thread that we can see. Different versions of Windows, some using antivirus, some who do not have any AV installed. The users always download and run the setup themselves. It is an EXE Installshield installer.


Answer

jpbro: Our software installer is not the problem. Our software is downloaded by hundreds of people everyday. Yet only a small number have reported a problem related to the Chilkat DLL's. So we are looking for answers from others who may have experienced this issue and discovered the cause and solution. If you haven't experienced this issue you are not likely to offer a solution.


Answer

We invite any others to post comments regarding any experience with this issue. To recap:

  1. All users are logged into Windows as an administrator
  2. User running XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 have all recently reported this issue
  3. Many have tried uninstalling all antivirus software to no avail
  4. Many have tried running the setup and the software using "Run as administrator"
  5. Most users can download and install our software with no DLL issues so this affects a small number of users only