Comments on: Listing ActiveX Controls

Question: Listing ActiveX Controls

iconjack — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:09:19 -0800

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.

By: ed\26h

ed\26h — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:16:16 -0800

Add-on Manager?

By: matthewr

matthewr — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:16:35 -0800

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.

By: matthewr

matthewr — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:17:57 -0800

Nope ed\26h, that just deals with IE Addons. Not all IE Addons are ActiveX controls, and very few ActiveX controls are IE Addons.

By: iconjack

iconjack — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:52:08 -0800

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.

By: baylink

baylink — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:03:49 -0800

Check the advanced mode in Spybot; I think it's in there.