IE Explorer Bar - ANYONE?

[BarNone]

I'm working on a dll extension for the IE Explorer Bar. I'm pulling my hair trying to figure out how to get my frmband to display it's controls with the XP-Style look. This is an ActiveX DLL project created in VB6, and is primarily designed to run on WinXP systems.

I already tried inserting a resource file containing the proper manifest to the compiled dll file, and even though I initialized the ComCtl32.dll version 6 correctly in the project, it still wont work.

The only other way I'm able to get the xp-style to display, is to have a separate manifest file named 'Explorer.exe.manifest', and install it to the end-user's windows directory. It sure would be nice to do without that second file in the distribution package.

Is this my only option, or can I do something else? Thanks.