Related to Microsoft Comcat.dll and comcat.msm file

Question

Hi,

what is the purpose of comcat.dll and what are the versions of windows OS does it comes by default?
we have this dll as part of our installer but we don't know the use of this dll.
I can see it coming with windows 10, but I want to know what are the versions it comes by default?
if we use this dll, do we have to ship it explicitly?

Thanks,
Ganesh

Answer 1

Comcat.dll is a system dll that hosts COM's Component Categories Manager - see the-component-categories-manager. If you examine the documentation for the related interfaces you can see that the minimum supported windows client/server versions is Windows 2000.

There should be no need for this dll to be part of your deployment since it should already be present on a target system. And, since COM interfaces are immutable once they are published, you should be able to use the the existing Component Categories manager interfaces on any target system

Answer 2

ComCat uses ICatRegister and ICatInformation