Re: HowTo: Unregister a DLL/Control when the File no longer Exists

We also have another internal utility that builds a large suite of VB
projects, in the correct order, and deals with this exact situation Karl
(i.e. unregistering the previous binary before letting VB6.exe generate the
new one. It also does lots of other stuff too (e.g. automatically building
locale-dependent resources) but that's OT. However, the RegClean type
utility I mentioned before was for a different case. It's oh so easy to go
and build a temporary copy of something, or install an older product version
to test something, and then get lazy and just delete the directory
afterwards - I've even done it myself. I guess you could put it down to a
general COM pitfall. The only solution I can think of would be if the Delete
operation first checked whether the file had self-registration code (which
is quite easy) and then confirm quickly whether it was still recorded in the
registry.

Tony Proctor

"Karl E. Peterson" <karl@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uWV1stxjGHA.3588@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I wonder if an add-in could be written that automatically unregistered a
axComponent before compiling one destined to overwrite it? That's my
most-common scenario, when I'm in the very early (ie, design-by-coding)
phases of a project.
--
Working without a .NET?
http://classicvb.org/


Tony Proctor wrote:
We wrote an internal RegClean type utility to deal with this
situation since almost anyone can be guilty of deleting registered
files (e.g. QA/Installation teams as well as developers). We found it
was happening to a significant extent, plus Microsoft's RegClean
didn't always fix it, plus a third party tool had already caused
"registry bloat" by not cleaning the registry properly over a period
of time.

In principle, it's a matter of associating the Typelib records (may be
multiple versions) with their respective ClsID records, IID records,
and AppID records....and then deleting them all together. However,
matching them up without the original DLL (or EXE, or TLB) is not
foolproof. See


http://groups.google.ie/group/microsoft.public.vb.com/msg/6b5dd45f89c04a0b?hl=en&;
for instance

Tony Proctor

"Charles Law" <blank@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:#PHoB26iGHA.3408@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have a project group, in a specific location on disk, that contains
several projects. There is the main EXE and a few ActiveX DLLs.

The main project references one of the DLLs, which in turn references
another DLL. So far so good.

Periodically, I copy the entire directory hierarchy to another,
similar, location, and call it version 2; so the parent directory
MyProject still exists, but now there is one alongside it called
MyProject #2. I begin working on #2.

When I am happy with the changes in #2, I delete the original
directory structure altogether.

When I look in the references, I can still see the original
controls. How can I remove them without wading through the registry
in the vain hope that I know what I am doing? I realise that I can
never include one of these as a reference because I get an "Error
loading DLL" message, but in time I get a proliferation of entries
in the references section to files that do not exist, and at best
this creates clutter but at worst it means that I have to work
through them until I find the right one to include. [Of course,
until I delete the earlier version, it is still possible to include
the wrong file, which is more serious]

TIA

Charles





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Relevant Pages

  • Re: HowTo: Unregister a DLL/Control when the File no longer Exists
    ... Tony Proctor wrote: ... recorded in the registry. ... However, matching them up without the original DLL ... The main project references one of the DLLs, ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)
  • Re: HowTo: Unregister a DLL/Control when the File no longer Exists
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