Installation Problems with COM Interop

[Guest]

Hello All,

I have created a C# project that sets "Register for COM Interop" to true,
and sets the ProgId and Guid attributes for the class. I then use this
control inside VB6.

This all works correctly on my development machine (oh no, one of those!),
creating a DLL and a tlb on each compile, and setting the entries in the
registry. It also appears to work correctly on a separate Build machine,
where the output then gets packaged for installation using InstallShield 11.
The .NET output gets packaged in a merge module, which is then included in a
number of installations (both .NET and COM).

When it gets installed, there are no installation errors. However, the
registry settings (ProgID and CLSID, for example) are not being set, and
therefore the control cannot be seen from a COM-based project using late
binding. It works fine for a .NET test container, but since that's not
registry-dependant, I am not surprised.

I am not sure if this is a problem with the way I am setting up
InstallShield, if there is an InstallShield issue, or if it is in the .NET
code itself.

If anybody has any ideas or experience with this, I'd appreciate any ideas.

Thanks,
pagates

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

pagates,

You said that you are using this "control" inside of VB6. By that, do
you mean an ActiveX control? If so, you should be warned that MS doesn't
support exporting ActiveX controls from .NET.

That being said, the registry settings are created when you run the
assembly through regasm, which will read the attributes and create the
assembly. That being said, you probably need to direct InstallShield to do
the same, assuming it doesn't have any facility to do it already.

Hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

Hi Nick,

Thanks. After trying many combinations of "Self Register" (which will
always fail) and "Extract COM at Build" in InstallShield, I finally found a
setting called ".NET COM Interop" in InstallShield. After setting that to
"Yes", the components registered correctly.

Thanks Again,
PAGates

pagates,

You said that you are using this "control" inside of VB6. By that, do
you mean an ActiveX control? If so, you should be warned that MS doesn't
support exporting ActiveX controls from .NET.

That being said, the registry settings are created when you run the
assembly through regasm, which will read the attributes and create the
assembly. That being said, you probably need to direct InstallShield to do
the same, assuming it doesn't have any facility to do it already.

Hope this helps.


--
- Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]
- (e-mail address removed)

Hello All,

I have created a C# project that sets "Register for COM Interop" to true,
and sets the ProgId and Guid attributes for the class. I then use this
control inside VB6.

This all works correctly on my development machine (oh no, one of those!),
creating a DLL and a tlb on each compile, and setting the entries in the
registry. It also appears to work correctly on a separate Build machine,
where the output then gets packaged for installation using InstallShield
11.
The .NET output gets packaged in a merge module, which is then included in
a
number of installations (both .NET and COM).

When it gets installed, there are no installation errors. However, the
registry settings (ProgID and CLSID, for example) are not being set, and
therefore the control cannot be seen from a COM-based project using late
binding. It works fine for a .NET test container, but since that's not
registry-dependant, I am not surprised.

I am not sure if this is a problem with the way I am setting up
InstallShield, if there is an InstallShield issue, or if it is in the .NET
code itself.

If anybody has any ideas or experience with this, I'd appreciate any
ideas.

Thanks,
pagates