I created an installer for my AnyCPU DLLs. I've marked my assemblies with teh Assembly=.net directive in my project as well. The installer seems to be able to register the COM servers successfully on my XP 32bit machine, but fails to do so in my Windows7 Machine. I did run the installer in admin mode. Also I looked up the Win764 registry and found those CLSIDs in the reigstry. So looks like the MSI did put some entries in the registry but somehow they are not being recognized as valid COM Server entries (OLE Viewer also didnt enumerate my server).
Any idea why this would happen? Any extra config do I need to add to my project?
thanks
Apparently you need to compile your msi as a 64-bit native binary to have the dlls registered in 64 bit mode.
Related
I have an InstallShield Basic MSI project which builds both 32-bit and 64-bit installers using Release Flags mechanism to build the different packages with the correct Template Summary, etc. One of my Components is an explorer.exe shell extension, so in order for this to work it needs to be registered in the 64-bit node in the registry when installed on windows 64-bit, NOT in the Wow6432Node. However, because this is a 32-bit Component to Windows Installer it will get registered as such and go down the Wow6432Node. I am told by InstallShield that this is native Windows Installer behavior and there is really no way around this other than Custom Actions (which I have already resorted to).
Do I have to resort to running regasm? This is what I currently do however I would rather not use Custom Actions for something like this. Also, it appears that other products have the same pattern: a 64-bit shell extension, however installed down program files (x86). I see TFS Power Tools and WinZip doing this for example. For these products, I do NOT see regasm.exe running so I assume they have some other mechanism for this.
Any ideas?
Did you try to set msidbComponentAttributesDisableRegistryReflection (Component table) attribute for that component?
I'm using Visual Studio 2010 to build a MSI consisting of several DLL files set to register using vsdrpCOMSelfReg. There are also several Windows services that are installed using custom actions. My target machine is running Windows 32bit embedded standard.
My previous development box ran Windows 7 64 bit and I could build and install this MSI with no problem. I recently changed over to Windows 8 Pro, and when I build the MSI using the exact same code base I get "failed to register" errors on my DLLs, which then causes the services to fail installing.
I have a "Privileged" launch condition in the MSI that passes for both versions, so it looks like the required permissions are there.
If I set the DLL files to "vsdrpCOM" I can successfully register after the fact using regsvr32, but my services can't install because they rely on those DLLs being registered to complete their own installation.
What am I missing? What changed with DLL registry beween Windows 7 and Windows 8?
The usual cause for this is missing dependencies. ComSelfReg requires your Dlls to load and run during the install. If you have included the VC++ runtime support as merge modules and they install in WinSxS then they are not available until after your selfreg code needs to run. The symptoms are exactly those you'd get when the VC++ runtime is being installed from merge modules and do not already exist on the system - failure during the install and success with regsvr32 after the install.
In general you should look at using a tool that doesn't require code to install services. All the major install tools populate the ServiceInstall and ServiceControl tables in the MSI file because MSI will install services just fine, but VS setups don't use them for some reason.
The problem was in the dependencies automatically pulled in when I added the DLL Project Outputs. One of the detected dependencies was IPHLPAPI.DLL, pulled from C:\Windows\System32. This DLL was then copied into the application directory. In my install of Windows 8 Pro, IPHLPAPI.DLL is version 6.2.9200.16420. In Windows 7, this file is version 6.1.7600.16385.
I'm guessing my assemblies were referencing the Windows 8 version since that was in the local directory, and this caused registration and/or runtime errors. I excluded IPHLPAPI.DLL from the installer and everything is now running correctly, referencing the file in System32.
I have created a new simple COM object in Visual Studio 2008 using the ATL-wizard. The object has a single class and simple methods. The ATL-wizard did generate .rgs-files for my class.
When I run regsvr32 Simple.dll on my XP machine the class is registered, information shows up in HKCR\Simple.SimpleObject and in HKCR\CLSID\{guid} as I expect.
However, on my 64bit Windows 7 machine it's not the same. I run regsvr32 as administrator the parts in HKCR\Simple.SimpleObject show up. But the part in HKCR\CLSID never gets there. And hence I cannot create new instances. (Being desperate I have tried both regsvr32 in System32 and in SysWOW64, same effect.)
Why dont regsrv32 put data into HKCR\CLSID?
HKCR is an alias for HKLM\Software\Classes but it doesn't show everything. Look in HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID for the registered {guid}. Which is where c:\system32\syswow64\regsvr32.exe writes them.
You did mention that you already tried that. There's something really wrong with that, you cannot arbitrarily run either version of Regsvr32.exe and get the same DLL registered. A 32-bit DLL cannot be loaded in a 64-bit process. In other words, there's no way for the 64-bit version of Regsvr32.exe to register a 32-bit COM server. And the other way around. Why you didn't get an error message is unguessable from here, the only sane explanation is that you somehow didn't actually run the right version of Regsvr32.
To really debug this, use SysInternals' ProcMon utility. Its trace shows you how the ATL registrar is writing the keys in the registry.
32bit applications and components are getting redirected to a different part of the registry. If you are browsing the registry with the 64bit version of regedit you will not find it at the location you expect.
Therefore your component should register itself in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID.
In this registry path it should be visible to all 32bit applications.
See also:
Windows 64-bit registry v.s. 32-bit registry
David Broman's CLR Profiling API Blog: WOW64 and Your Profiler
We just had a similar issue here, Regsvr32 was not reporting an error, but nothing appeared to be written to the registry.
Running 'As Administrator' seemed to do the trick.
I'm trying to add a .NET 4.0 .dll to the GAC. I am attempting to do this because it is published by a 3rd party company as both a 32 and 64bit .dll which I must use from different apps on different platforms in both formats.
At any rate, I am having trouble registering this dll to the GAC on a Windows Server 2008 environment.
I have tried copying gacutil.exe (and supporting file) found at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools" on my local machine to the "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319" folder on the target production server per the suggestions found here.
I then tried copying them to "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319".
Running from both locations indicated successful installation. And indeed, the registration appears successful:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_64\ChilkatDotNet4\v4.0_9.0.8.0__eb5fc1fc52ef09bd\ChilkatDotNet4.dll
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_32\ChilkatDotNet4\v4.0_9.0.8.0__eb5fc1fc52ef09bd\ChilkatDotNet4.dll
However, running a console app that refers to the (64bit) version of the dll errors out with the following message:
System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could
not load file or assembly
'ChilkatDotNet4.dll' or one of its
dependencies. The specified module
could not be found. File name:
'ChilkatDotNet4.dll'
So, I have now manually created the following GAC entries using mkdir and copy from a command prompt (which may or may not actually work. I have no clue what is so special about gacutil.exe):
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL\ChilkatDotNet4\v4.0_9.0.8.0__eb5fc1fc52ef09bd\ChilkatDotNet4.dll (using the 64bit version of the dll)
C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_64\ChilkatDotNet4\v4.0_9.0.8.0__eb5fc1fc52ef09bd\ChilkatDotNet4.dll
C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_32\ChilkatDotNet4\v4.0_9.0.8.0__eb5fc1fc52ef09bd\ChilkatDotNet4.dll
After each "install" of the dll, I tested and received the same error. Any ideas welcome!
EDIT: the GAC issue above may not actually be the culprit. Turns out, even when I create a brand new Console App project and add the .dll directly (so that it lives in the bin), I still can't run it on the sever. Also, I've noted that Console apps are created targeting the .NET 4.0 Client Profile rather than the .NET Framework 4. When I try to run it targeting the client profile, it appears that none of the System.Web* libraries are available. However, I tried running a very simple test app targeting both and neither would run on the server while referencing the bad .dll.
Is there a special kind of install that was to occur to run .NET 4.0 Console Apps?
For anyone else who may have trouble with this in the future. It was not a generalized problem with the way I was registering the dll to the GAC or how I was referring to it from my projects.
ChilkatDotNet4.dll (and the other versions I'm sure) was built in Visual C++. So, the server it is being deployed to has to have the Visual C++ Runtime installed for the appropriate processor architecture.
For 2010 (.NET 4.0):
x86
x64
If you're running an x86 app on a 64-bit platform. Make sure to mark the application pool with "Enable 32-bit applications" = true.
I heard on Windows x64 architecture, in order to support to run both x86 and x64 application, there is two separate/different sets of Windows registry -- one for x86 application to access and the other for x64 application to access? For example, if a COM registers CLSID in the x86 set of registry, then x64 application will never be able to access the COM component by CLSID, because x86/x64 have different sets of registry?
So, my question is whether my understanding of the above sample is correct? I also want to get some more documents to learn this topic, about the two different sets of registry on x64 architecture. (I did some search, but not found any valuable information.)
I ran into this issue not long ago. The short answer is that if you run a 32 bit application on a 64 bit machine then it's registry keys are located under a Wow6432Node.
For example, let's say you have an application that stores its registry information under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\CompanyX
If you compile your application as a 64 bit binary and run it on a 64 bit machine then the registry keys are in the location above. However, if you compile your application as a 32 bit binary and run it on a 64 bit machine then your registry information is now located here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\CompanyX
This means that if you run both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of your application on the same machine then they will each be looking at a different set of registry keys.
Your understanding is correct. There wouldn't be any need for a x64 app to access the x86 CLSIDs since it could never load those components anyway and vice versa.
If you want to create component for use by both x86 and x64 then you need to either create a pair of dlls one built for x86 and the other for x64 and register both in their appropriate parts of the registry. The regsrv32.exe in the System32 folder will perversely register the x64 component and the regsrv32.exe in the SysWOW64 folder will register the x86 component.
Alternatively build a .NET assembly for Any CPU which can used by either CPU architecture.
They aren't separate registries--one is a subnode of the other, and the OS does virtualization to make sure that 32bit apps get their keys and 64bit apps get their keys.
Here is the Wikipedia article on the WOW64 registry which may give you some of the information you are looking for:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOW64
I run an x64 bit machine as my desktop; and I have never run into any issues with the different registry configurations.
Per MSDN, there is apparently a difference:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724072(VS.85).aspx
HTH
How to register .NET assembly to be used as COM in pure 64-bit application?
Problem:
By default, if you enable "Register for COM Interop" in build settings, it DOES NOT register type library for 64-bit.
Solution:
To register your assembly which is not in GAC on a 64-bit machine, open cmd window and do:
cd c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework64\v2.x.xxxxx
regasm /codebase "path to your compiled assembly dll"
This will eliminate "Class Not Registered Error" when using native C++ to instanciate .NET assembly as COM object.