Listing ActiveX Controls

July 26, 2006 12:09 PM

Is there a way to view what ActiveX controls are installed on my Windows XP machine? Surely there's something built-in to the OS, but I can't seem to find it.

I thought they might show up in Control Panel. Failing that, I thought REGSVR32 would have a list option. But no, not as far as I can tell.

posted by iconjack to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Add-on Manager?
posted by ed\26h at 12:16 PM on July 26, 2006

I asked this very question on comp.lang.basic.visual t'other day (here).

The answer is to look in the registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID. Stuff that has a subkey 'Control' is an ActiveX control (not including ActiveX DLLs
and EXEs).

<obvious>As ever, backup you registry before you fiddle with it.
posted by matthewr at 12:16 PM on July 26, 2006

Nope ed\26h, that just deals with IE Addons. Not all IE Addons are ActiveX controls, and very few ActiveX controls are IE Addons.
posted by matthewr at 12:17 PM on July 26, 2006

Thanks you guys. It was actually your question on comp.lang.basic.visual, matthewr, rather than the response about HKCR\CLSID, that provided me with the answer I was looking for. "If I use Microsoft's OLE Viewer and expand the Controls node..." led me to finding the OLE/COM Object Viewer within Visual Studio--I'd never noticed it before.
posted by iconjack at 12:52 PM on July 26, 2006

Check the advanced mode in Spybot; I think it's in there.
posted by baylink at 3:03 PM on July 26, 2006