make my activex control removable from manage addons

Question

I have an activex control. I want my users to be able to remove it.

This MS article implies that you can remove controls if you installed them yourself:

You can only delete ActiveX controls that you have downloaded and installed. You can't delete ActiveX controls that were preinstalled or add-ons of any kind, but you can disable them. To delete an ActiveX control that you have installed, use Manage add-ons. If the add-on cannot be removed in Manage add-ons, you might be able to uninstall it through Control Panel.

My control, if installed via an installer (MSI file), can be removed via the control panel, and if downloaded and installed from a web page (CAB file) it's not listed in the control panel.

Regardless of where the control came from, the IE8 manage addons 'remove' button (in More Information) is grayed out, for my control, and for all the other controls too. The quote implies that if the user installed it (by both accepting the yellow banner, and by running the installer) it should be able to be removed in manage addons.

What's going on, and how to I fix my control?

The .CAB contains a .OSD file, which contains:

<?XML version="1.0" ENCODING='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE SOFTPKG SYSTEM "http://www.microsoft.com/standards/osd/osd.dtd"&gt;
<?XML::namespace href="http://www.microsoft.com/standards/osd/msicd.dtd" as="MSICD"?>
<SOFTPKG NAME="DocWayTransfer7" VERSION="7,0,0,0">
        <TITLE> DocWayTransfer7 </TITLE>
            <MSICD::NATIVECODE>
                <CODE NAME="DocWayTransfer7">
                    <IMPLEMENTATION>
                        <CODEBASE FILENAME="DocWayTransfer7.dll">
                        </CODEBASE>
                    </IMPLEMENTATION>
                </CODE>
            </MSICD::NATIVECODE>
</SOFTPKG>

Answer 1

This article says that OSD file cannot make registry entries:

Do you want to register your software component?

Stand-alone OSD files cannot make registry entries. You will either have to use a stand-alone executable or a cabinet file with an INF file (with or without an OSD file).

Maybe this is a cause of the problem. I would try to add .inf file to the CAB.

Answer 2

Tools-->Internet options-->General Tab-->browsing History section.... click settings and then click "View objects". A list of your active X add on's are displayed in the windows folder that they are stored in. You can manipulate these files as you would any others. Simply delete the ones you want to uninstall and restart IE.