dll registration problem 0x80004005 on windows 8

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I have a dll (addin to outlook) that is produced in vb. For years I have put it in the addins folder and registered it and away I go but....

on windows 8 PCs it refuses to register

I run a cmd prompt "As Administrator" and then use regsvr32 with the path and I get the error "... was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80004005"

I had a Windows 8 PC that was upgraded from Windows 7 and the DLL continued to work but, whilst testing, I unregistered it (I believe without error) and I cannot register it on this machine either now

From my searches I can see lots of problems where people receive this error but nothing that suggests how I can identify what the problem is

Any suggestions

Thanks Mike

Posted 24-Oct-13 6:58am

MikeD 2

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Mike Meinz · Answer 1 · 2013-10-24T08:42:00

Solution 1

The article at this link may help resolve this issue.

Error Message When You Run Regsvr32.exe on 64-Bit Windows[^]

The article says to do the following to register a 32-bit DLL on Windows 8.

DOS&

cd \windows\syswow64
regsvr32 c:\filename.dll

It is not very intuitive but the regsvr32.exe in C:\Windows\System32 is for 64-bit DLLs and the regsvr32.exe in C:\Windows\syswow64 is for 32-bit DLLs.

Posted 24-Oct-13 8:42am

Mike Meinz

Updated 24-Oct-13 8:45am

v2

Comments

phil.o 24-Oct-13 15:17pm

5'd! This naming nonsense of system folders was induced by the will to ensure backward compatibility with old executables. Still, there should have been some other more intuitive solution ^^

MikeD 2 28-Oct-13 6:19am

Thanks Mike, unfortunately this didn't make any difference

I don't know if it makes a difference but the dll was produced from vb6. I didn't say initially as it seems to me that a dll format should be consistent and either 32 bit or 64 bit but the source program shouldn't matter. But just in case...

Mike Meinz 28-Oct-13 6:41am

There are many formats of DLLs. I do not know if a DLL created by VB6 would work in the current Outlook program. You should convert the DLL to VB .NET.

MikeD 2 28-Oct-13 6:54am

I think the version of Outlook is irrelevant as is outlook itself as my problem is that I haven't been able to register this dll in Windows 8 (or 8.1)

To support this viewpoint the dll works with Outlook 2013 in Windows 7

I will try moving it to .net although I was hoping to find some way of identifying what the error message means and how to debug it as I have a feeling it is a permissions issue in the registry. Which is supported that a PC running windows 7 where the dll was already registered continued to allow the dll to work after the PC was in place upgraded to windows 8. This worked until I un-registered the dll as a test and now cannot register it again

Mike Meinz 28-Oct-13 8:51am

Is it possible that you are not logged on as an Administrator when you are trying to register the DLL?

MikeD 2 28-Oct-13 10:13am

lol, possible but fortunately not the case

logged in as an administrator and run cmd "as an administrator"

Not machine specific as I have tried this on a number of windows 8 PCs

Mike Meinz 28-Oct-13 12:16pm

I read some posts where it said you had to run CMD.EXE as administrator so that REGSVR32.EXE would run as administrator. When you run CMD.EXE as administrator, the Caption Bar will say "Administrator: Command Prompt".

Is this what you are doing?
Right-Click on Command Prompt (CMD.EXE) icon, select Run as administrator

MikeD 2 28-Oct-13 12:20pm

yes