Can't instantiate COM component in C# - error 80070002

Question

I'm attempting to instantiate a Windows Media Player COM object on my machine:

Guid mediaPlayerClassId = new Guid("47ac3c2f-7033-4d47-ae81-9c94e566c4cc");
Type mediaPlayerType = Type.GetTypeFromCLSID(mediaPlayerClassId);
Activator.CreateInstance(mediaPlayerType); // <-- this line throws

When executing that last line, I get the following error:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException was caught
  Message="Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {47AC3C2F-7033-4D47-AE81-9C94E566C4CC} failed due to the following error: 80070002."
  Source="mscorlib"
  StackTrace:
       at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandle& ctor, Boolean& bNeedSecurityCheck)
       at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean fillCache)
       at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks, Boolean fillCache)
       at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, Boolean nonPublic)
       at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type)
       at MyStuff.PreviewFile(String filePath) in F:\Trunk\PreviewHandlerHosting\PreviewHandlerHost.cs:line 60
  InnerException: 

This same code works on other developer machines and end user machines. For some reason, it only fails on my machine. What could be the cause?

Solution 1

80070002 is a File Not Found error.

My guess is your machine is missing a dependency. Try running the com component through depends.exe to see if you have all of the required libraries installed.

Solution 2

Well, 0x80070002 means File not found, so I'd check to see whether the DLL pointed to in the COM registration actually exists on your machine

Solution 3

Further possibly helpful info. We saw this issue on a classic asp web app which loads .net components. one app was fine, another was not. Same machine? So what gives? We weren't getting proper errors around failing to load a com component, just the error number 0x80070002.

Eventually this was fixed by just setting the app pool of the broken app to the same as the working app. Something about the app pool meant that the component couldn't be loaded properly, same identity etc (iis 6).

There were a bunch of old version numbers in the registry for that component, but regasm always does that, it's terrible at cleaning up, we've even had to write a little tool to delete them all when moving between version numbers on dev machines. But in this instance, those version numbers weren't the issue.

Conclusion: sounds like a permissions problem, but what do i know..

Comments

[overslacked]

I wish you'd posted what the problem was, to help others who arrive here later....

[Judah Gabriel Himango]

The problem turned out to be something really specific to our company. Basically, our software had installed a Windows Media preview handler that later was uninstalled, but left some registry keys in place. This preview handler was gone - hence File Not Found error - but some registry keys were left, causing this issue.

[overslacked]

Thanks very much for the update! I've been up and down a server we're having this same error on ... I'll take any details, no matter how abstract or useless seeming they are.

[Judah Gabriel Himango]

If I recall right, I searched the registry for the ID, then looked up the object in OleView. From there, I started to realize it was pointing to a preview handler for an old Windows Media Player format we had been using. Deleting that component from the registry fixed the issue.

[Judah Gabriel Himango]

It points to Windows Media Player COM object, which exists on my machine, of course, and runs fine...hmmm.

[Judah Gabriel Himango]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll run depends.exe and get back to you shortly.

[Judah Gabriel Himango]

Thanks, that helped me track down the real problem. I'm marking yours as the answer.