Problem in VB6 COM+ application reinstall

Question

We are experiencing a difficult problem which has been puzzling us for some time. We have two MSI setup files containing COM+ components and GUI respectively. The applications in both are written in VB6.

After a lot of testing we have arrived at this:

• Application initially installed: Works.
• Application uninstalled, new version installed: Does not work.
• New application uninstalled, old application installed again (should work): Does not work.

The components are installed on Windows Vista clients, initially by Active Directory deployment, but testing is done by removing that deployment from AD, manually uninstalling and manually installing.

With “Does not work” I mean: Unable to complete a transaction. It seems to be a timeout on anything between 200 and 445 seconds. The GUI application is using the COM+ components to DTC to a server witch a MSSQL database.

Now why am I posting such a specific error? I'm looking for information regarding:

• Any Windows Update update of MSDTC / COM+ the past year that could affect new installations.
• This may be a common problem that others have a hint to what could be causing it.
• Is there a COM+ cleanup utility to remove "old junk"?
• Could this be a result of how Windows Vista handles the old "dll-hell" problem, that the new version introduces a new shared file?
• Could it be something with versioning on components? (We have hundreds of them, difficult to say)

Answer 1

Ok, weird.

It seems installing SQL Native Client and opening for DTS in the local firewall solved the problem. The problem was actually that the SQLOLEDB provider seemed to break when reinstalling the application. This was not the case 1 year ago with the same executable, so something could have been changed on the network or by windows update.