Register DLL file on Windows Server 2008 R2

Question

I\'m trying to register a COM DLL file on Windows Server 2008 R2. Here are the steps I took:

1. Run cmd as administrator
2. c:\\windows\\syst

Answer 1

Error 0x80040154 is COM's REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG, which means "Class not registered". Basically, a COM class is not declared in the installation registry.

If you get this error when trying to register a DLL, it may be possible that the registration code for this DLL is trying to instantiate another COM server (DLL or EXE) which is missing or not registered on this installation.

If you don't have access to the original DLL source, I would suggest to use SysInternal's Process Monitor tool to track COM registry lookups (there use to be a more simple RegMon tool but it may not work any more).

You should put a filter on the working process (here: Regsvr32.exe) to only capture what's interesting. Then you should look for queries on HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\[a progid, a string] that fail (with the NAME_NOT_FOUND error for example), or queries on HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\[a guid] that fail.

PS: Unfortunately, there may be many thing that seem to fail on a perfectly working Windows system, so you'll have to study all errors carefully. Good luck :-)