Interop COM dll issue

Hi

I am trying to use a COM dll referenced from a vb.net project. Everything works fine when I reference the interop inside the IDE but when I publish the file in bin folder on my server I get:

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {A440BD76-CFE1-4D46-AB1F-15F238437A3D} failed due to the following error: 80040154.

Please note I can't register the original dll with regsvr as the server is with a hosting provider and I thought the point of interops was to be able to use old COM dlls without having to register them

Com file is a MS file, not ours.

Would be grateful for any hep as this is really blocking us.

No, Interop DLLs are not intended to allow you to use COM components without registering them. If you want to use a COM component then it needs to be registered, plain and simple. The point of an Interop library is to provide a translation layer between your managed application and the unmanaged COM component so that you don't have to write the complicated interop code yourself every time. You talk .NET to the Interop library and it talks COM to the COM component. In order for the COM component to be usable, it still needs to be registered.

I've had a similar error once when I deployed my application to a 64-bit computer. Maybe you need to change the targeting CPU from AnyCPU to x86. Without knowing anything about the COM object I can't really give you a better answer. But you *do* need to register the COM component.

If your hosting server can run your apps, can you not just regsvr32 it yourself on app start. If they provide hosting for .net apps, you could ask them to register it for you.

I don't know much about COM as I've never done any COM development. I am aware of the concept of registration-free COM though. A search turned up this, which could be of interest to you.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973913.aspx

Hi

The dll is capicom.dll.

Thanks to all for your excellent help.

Mike

Hi

The hosting cpy has just installed capicom but I still get the same error. Do u know if I have to build the interop from the actual same file as the one they used and if it has to be copied in the bin folder?

Many thanks,

Mike