CAPICOM

Hi,

I am able to run capicom.dll on 32-bit OS. Know we are planning to use same
capicom.dll on 64-bit OS. I came to know that there are some issues at
runtime, when we run capicom.dll on 64-bit OS. I need to implement the
capicom functionality on 64-bit OS.

can I overcome a problem of capicom on 64-bit OS.
Is there any alternate to CAPICOM which works same as CAPICOM on 64-bit
OS.

I tried in google, but I couldn't get the correct solution.

Please Help me..........

CAPICOM is a Cryptography API COM object. It is essentially a wrapper around the Windows API for cryptography. I am familiar with CAPICOM beause I wanted to encrypt and decrypt a password in a VB 6 program. CAPICOM is big and cumbersome so I used the Windows API for cryptography directly; I put a version of that code in my CryptEncrypt and CryptDecrypt. I am not suggesting you do that.

So it makes total sense to me that you would use the managed classes for cryptography, and that is what the article that Frogleg suggested says. Unless there is a substantial amount of existing code that uses CAPICOM, it seems unlikely there is any justification for using it in managed code. If you have unmanaged code to convert to managed code, then it seems there would be much more work than just converting CAPICOM so even then it seems that use of CAPICOM is not advisable.

Do you thunk? There is something called thunking that allows 16-bit Windows programs work with 32-bit Windows programs. COM can thunk without you even thinking about it. I assume that Microsoft is using the same thing or something better for 32-bit and 64-bit programs. So I doubt that the problem with CAPICOM is that it is 32-bit only. Probably the problem is that it is incompatible with Windows 7 for other reasons. Therefore it is unlikey there is any possible solution for using CAPICOM in Windows 7, unless you consider a virtual machine running an earlier version of Windows alongside Windows 7 to be "in" Windows 7.

2 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Sam Hobbs15y ago
CAPICOM is a Cryptography API COM object. It is essentially a wrapper around the Windows API for cryptography. I am familiar with CAPICOM beause I wanted to encrypt and decrypt a password in a VB 6 program. CAPICOM is big and cumbersome so I used the Windows API for cryptography directly; I put a version of that code in my CryptEncrypt and CryptDecrypt. I am not suggesting you do that.

So it makes total sense to me that you would use the managed classes for cryptography, and that is what the article that Frogleg suggested says. Unless there is a substantial amount of existing code that uses CAPICOM, it seems unlikely there is any justification for using it in managed code. If you have unmanaged code to convert to managed code, then it seems there would be much more work than just converting CAPICOM so even then it seems that use of CAPICOM is not advisable.

Do you thunk? There is something called thunking that allows 16-bit Windows programs work with 32-bit Windows programs. COM can thunk without you even thinking about it. I assume that Microsoft is using the same thing or something better for 32-bit and 64-bit programs. So I doubt that the problem with CAPICOM is that it is 32-bit only. Probably the problem is that it is incompatible with Windows 7 for other reasons. Therefore it is unlikey there is any possible solution for using CAPICOM in Windows 7, unless you consider a virtual machine running an earlier version of Windows alongside Windows 7 to be "in" Windows 7.
Frogleg15y ago
Some info
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc778518(VS.85).aspx