Fail to CoCreateInstance an EXE COM server

Question

Hi,

I have an EXE COM server (used to elevate our application to a higher integrity level) which is downloaded to %temp% and registered by an ActiveX control. This COM server works pretty well on Vista machines. On Window 7 machines I got something wired: the COM server can be downloaded and registered successfully, but I got the error 0x80080005 (Server execution failed ) when trying to initialize the server by CoCreateInstance. If I copy the COM server to %temp% manually instead of downloading it via internet then everything works as expected. I am suspecting that the downloaded EXE files have some special attributes that prevent it been loaded but have no idea how to figure it out.

Does anyone have the same experience or have any clue for this issue? Any suggests will be highly appreciated.

Joe

Answer 1

Yes they do. Start a command prompt and use DIR /R. You'll see the alternate data stream in the file. The one that says: "don't trust this file, it came from an untrusted source".

You can delete them with the filename:streamname syntax. Check if that's okay with your customer first. I don't know many that are thrilled about EXEs getting downloaded and bypassing normal security rulez.