Deploy system DLL inside CAB file

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I’m looking for a way to deploy a system DLL within my ActiveX CAB file. CAB cannot update system file and whole installation fails. Perfectly, I would like to copy the DLL into ActiveX installation folder.

My best suggestion (I didn’t try it yet) is using INF file hooks with some standalone installer, but I wonder is there another way?

Any other ideas will be appreciated…

2
deploymentdllactivexcabinf
I use dbghelp.dll for dump creation, but in Win2K dbghelp.dll does not contain MiniDumpWriteDump. So I need to use later version and cannot replace system’s one. – Eugene
Perhaps this is a dumb question, but is it really a hard requirement that you need to be able to call MiniDumpWriteDump even on Win2K? It might reduce headache to use LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress against the system copy of this binary and just "fail gracefully" if the entrypoint is missing (as it will be on 2K)... It should hopefully be present in XP+... – reuben
Reuben, I’ve tried this way, but it does not work properly with WinXP, mostly application just hangs up. I don’t know why, probably there is some specific. – Eugene

2 Answers

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Pack your dll in as a resource of the main ActiveX control. Use your own code to write it to a file.

The malware industry has lots of experience doing this, and example code should be available.

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You can install the dll into the ActiveX installation folder and dynamically load the dll (using LoadLibrary) and its methods (using GetProcAddress).
This way you will be able to control from where to load the dll and use your local copy instead of the system.