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Enable or Disable DCOM

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Applies To: Windows Server 2008

If the computer using Component Services is part of a network, Component Services needs the DCOM wire protocol to communicate with Component Object Model (COM) components on other computers. In a Windows-based system, by default, network computers are initially configured to enable DCOM. You can disable DCOM, but doing so disables communication with components on other computers.

You can use the following procedure to enable or disable DCOM.

Membership in Administrators, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

To enable or disable DCOM

  1. Open Component Services.

  2. In the console tree, click the Computers folder, right-click the computer for which you want to enable or disable DCOM, and then click Properties.

  3. Click the Default Properties tab.

  4. To enable DCOM, select the Enable Distributed COM on this computer check box. To disable DCOM, clear this check box.

  5. Click OK.

Additional considerations

  • Component Services is no longer in Administrative Tools. To open Component Services, click Start. In the search box, type dcomcnfg, and then press ENTER**.**

  • When you enable the DCOM service, you also have to configure the firewall on both the computer running the component as well as the computer running Component Services. For details about configuring the firewall for DCOM, see Using Distributed COM with Firewalls (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=38001).

  • If you disable DCOM on a remote computer, you cannot remotely access that computer to enable DCOM again. To enable DCOM again, you must have physical access to that computer.

Additional references