Why does my Outlook 2003 .Com Add-In disappears after reboot!

[DavidA]

Hi

I am trying to rollout a .Com add-in for Outlook 2003 which links Outlook to
a third party application (Gifts - www.microedge.com). The add-in installs
fine and the icon appears on the standard outlook toolbar. The link works and
does as it is supposed to.

However when the user logs off and logs back on again the icon no longer
appears, the .Com add-in does not show on the Help > About Outlook > Disabled
Items and also is not shown on Tools > Options > Other > Advanced > Com
Add-ins ..

I have tried installing the add-in as Local Admin, Domain Admin and
Administrator all with the same result. I have also added a standard user to
the local admin group and installed the add-in on their login but this also
failed on reboot.

I get no errors and no


My Setup:

Exchange Server 2007 SP1
Windows Server 2003 x64 Service Pack 2
Windows XP SP3
Outlook 2003 SP3

Any help would be great

Thanks in advance David

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Where is the addin registered, in HKCU or HKLM? If it's in HKLM then on
Outlook 2003 you would never see it in the COM Add-Ins dialog since it was
registered as an administrative installation. If that's the case then I'd
look into the registry and see if LoadBehavior has been changed to 2.

That can happen even without disabling the addin if you have unhandled
exceptions that aren't crashing Outlook. It can also happen if Outlook is
not exiting and on restart you are working with a hung session. I'd check in
Task Manager to verify that Outlook is actually exiting.

If it's an unhandled exception it seems to have worse effects if you are
using managed code as opposed to using unmanaged code. In addition, if you
are using managed code then you have to suspect possible load errors,
although the fact that the addin loaded once tends to discount that
possibility.

 

[DavidA]

Thanks Ken,

The Add-in is registered HKCU and I have checked the task manager and
Outlook seems to be exiting fine.

I have since found the following warning in the event viewer but I'm not
sure if this is relevant:

The COM+ Event System failed to create an instance of the subscriber
partition:{41E90F3E-56C1-4633-81C3-6E8BAC8BDD70}!new:{6295DF2D-35EE-11D1-8707-00C04FD93327}. CoGetObject returned HRESULT 8000401A.

Thanks

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

There's really no way to tell what's going on from that information. If your
LoadBehavior is still 3 and you are registered in HKCU there shouldn't be a
reason for the addin to not at least show up in the COM Add-Ins dialog.

Do you do any error logging? I'd suggest heavily logging everything to see
if the addin is at least loading.

Are you handling all exceptions? You have to with a COM addin.

You didn't say if this was managed or unmanaged code, so I can't really
offer any other advice.

 

[DavidA]

Thanks for your help Ken, sorry I'm not that clued up with this type of
problem.

David