Unregistering an ATL DLL or .exe file that was built with a version of Visual C++ prior to Visual C++ 6.0 might result in an access violation

Unregistering an ATL DLL or .exe file that was built with a version of Microsfot Visual C++ prior to Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 might result in an access violation when Atl.dll (version 3.00.8168) that ships with Visual C++6.0 is installed on the computer.

Running "REGSVR32.EXE /U" to unregister an ATL DLL might display the following error message: Running an ATL .exe file with the "/Unregserver" switch may display a dialog box titled "OleMainThreadWndName: <server.exe> - Application Error", with the following error message: The ATL server has to be of build type Release MinSize or Unicode Release MinSize.

In the version of Atl.dll that comes with Visual C++ 6.0, the _ATL_OBJMAP_ENTRY structure has an additional member called "pfnGetCategoryMap". During unregistration, AtlModuleUnregisterServerEx() tries to access this member, which does not exist for ATL servers built prior to Visual C++ 6.0, and the access violation occurs.

To work around this problem, use one of the following options:

• Rebuild your server with Release MinDependency. This statically links in all the code that was in Atl.dll, so your server isn't dependent on it. Even for a 'Release MinDependency' atl.dll may need to be shipped. For more information about this, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  244955  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244955/ ) ATL projects built for MinDependency need Atl.dll if the projects use ATL control containment code in Visual C++ 6.0
• Rebuild your server with Visual C++ 6.0.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.
This bug was corrected in Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3.

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