VSS Hardware provider

Question

I've been trying to follow the instructions to install the example VSS hardware provider that comes with the Windows SDK. Unfortunately COM refuses to register the DLL, giving the following output:

Unregistering the existing application...
- Create the catalog object
- Get the Applications collection
- Populate...
- Search for VssSampleProvider application...
- Saving changes...
Done.
Creating a new COM+ application:
- Creating the catalog object
- Get the Applications collection
- Populate...
- Add new application object
- Set app name = VssSampleProvider
- Set app description = VSS HW Sample Provider
- Set app access check = true
- Set encrypted COM communication = true
- Set secure references = true
- Set impersonation = false
- Save changes...
- Create Windows service running as Local System
- Add the DLL component

ERROR:
- Error code: -2146368511 [0x80110401]
- Exit code: 113
- Description:
- Source:
- Help file:
- Help context: 0
- COM+ Errors detected: (2)
* (COM+ ERROR 0) on C:\VssSampleProvider\VssSampleProvider.dll
ErrorCode: -2146368486 [0x8011041A]
MajorRef: C:\VssSampleProvider\VssSampleProvider.dll
MinorRef: invalid
* (COM+ ERROR 1) on SampleProvider
ErrorCode: -2146368486 [0x8011041A]
MajorRef: {423BBC78-9B20-4BBE-A967-B63EC43BC7F3}
MinorRef: invalid

This is the same problem described in this thread:

http://www.osronline.com/showthread.cfm?link=185213

I've tried using both x86 and x64 machines, but it makes no difference. Any hints or suggestions would be most welcome.

Answer 1

I managed to solve this issue in the end. It turns out you can only install hardware providers on windows server distributions, I was using ordinary Windows 7. See the MSDN page for the API call:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa381923(v=vs.85).aspx

Compiling for 64 bit and using the 64 bit tools with the SDK on a windows server 2012 machine it seems to work correctly.

Answer 2

This requires msvcr110.dll and msvcp110.dll. These files comes with 'Visual C++ Redistributable Packages'. You can get latest 'Visual C++ Redistributable Packages' at following link. http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=40784