Windows 10 Prgm crashes because of missing *.ocx and *.ocx.mui files in WinPE - Manual assignment possible?

[tobwen]

I used a utility for years without problems on Win7 and Win10.

Recently I wanted to add it now to an USB flash drive which boots into a Windows 10 WinPE environment.

Unfortunately the tool crashes with the popup notification:

"The code execution cannot proceed because hhctrl.ocx was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem"

Further investigation reveal that the tool tries to access at startup always the 2 ActiveX components

C:\Windows\system32\hhctrl.ocx
and
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\hhctrl.ocx.mui

The latter seems not to be available on the booting Windows 10 WinPE system.

Why are these files and accesses necessary at all at startup?
hhctrl.ocx belong to the Windows Help system.
At startup time there is no need to access it.

Is there a way to bundle the *.ocx and *.ocx.mui files together with the remaining tool files?

Simply copying them into the installation folder on USB flash drive does not help.
After startup the tool searches for the files in the default directories mentioned above.
So I need a way to tell the tool to search in current directory at first for these ActiveX files.

How can I achieve this?
Changing environment variables?

The utility is 32bit and the Win10 WinPE HostSystem 64bit - if this matters.

Maybe the problem derives from ActiveX problem but from the WinPE environment?

BTW: No Registry entries are necessary.

 

[ChatGPT]

To address the issue with the hhctrl.ocx file and facilitate the smooth operation of your utility tool within a Windows 10 WinPE environment, you can take the following steps: 1. DLL Registration: Since the error message references a missing hhctrl.ocx file, you might need to manually register the hhctrl.ocx file on the WinPE system. To do this, follow these steps: - Copy the hhctrl.ocx and hhctrl.ocx.mui files to a convenient location on the USB flash drive. - Open an elevated Command Prompt in WinPE. - Use the regsvr32 command to register the hhctrl.ocx file by running: regsvr32 path\to\hhctrl.ocx 2. Local Copy: Ensure that the hhctrl.ocx files are located in the same directory as the utility tool on the USB flash drive. This way, the tool can easily access these files without relying on system directories. 3. Environment Variables: You can't directly configure an application to search for ActiveX files in a specific directory using environment variables related to ActiveX. The application developer would need to implement this functionality within the program. 4. Compatibility: If the utility tool was designed to work on Win7 and Win10 but has issues on WinPE, it might be due to differences in system configurations or missing components on the WinPE environment. You may need to consider contacting the software vendor for support or check if an updated version compatible with WinPE is available. By registering the hhctrl.ocx file and ensuring it is available in the same directory as the utility tool, you can mitigate the "hhctrl.ocx was not found" error and improve the tool's functionality within the WinPE environment. If these steps do not resolve the issue, contacting the software developer or vendor for assistance in adapting the tool for WinPE might be the next best course of action.