Technical Support Notes

Symptoms
During SPEL for Windows 2.x setup, the following message box is displayed:

Causes
If a running application is using COMCAT.DLL, this message will occur.

This includes the following:

• Internet Explorer Active Desktop (option installed with Internet Explorer)
• Visual Basic
• Any VB application

A common cause of this problem is Internet Explorer 4.01 with Active Desktop because Active Desktop uses COMCAT.DLL and you cannot stop Active Desktop. If you installed Internet Explorer 4.01 without Active Desktop, you will not see this problem.

Normally, if a DLL or OCX file is in use during installation, the new version of the file is renamed to the base name of the file plus a number, such as COMCAT.1. Then when the system is re-booted, the file is copied over the previous version. But for COMCAT.DLL, the setup program gets an error during registration .

Remedies
This error can be ignored. If SPEL for Windows can be started after installation re-boot with no errors, then there should not be any problems caused by the registration failure. In some cases, the Visual Basic Components dialog cannot be opened after installation. If this occurs, you should do the following steps:

1. Open a command window (DOS prompt).
2. cd \winnt\system32
3. regsvr32 comcat.dll

If an error occurs:

1. Delete comcat.dll.
2. Re-install SPEL for Windows.

There is a problem reported by Microsoft regarding the VB Components dialog and COMCAT.DLL. The article number is Q183370.


Status
This problem has been fixed in SPEL for Windows 2.0 version 2.2.1.

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