Checkin’ those components!!

 

Checkin’ those components!!

Well, it finally happened – Component Checker 2.0 was finally posted on Microsoft.com.  I don’t know that the actual functionality is earth shattering, but it is nice to finally see it out there.

“What is Component Checker?” and “Why should I care it was updated?” are probably right on the tip of your tongue.  Wait for it, wait for it…

OK, no more teasing – Component Checker is a tool that can be used to check the state of your Microsoft Data Access Components (affectionately known as “MDAC” by those who deal with it) installation.  These components are used by all native applications to talk to various types of databases and are basically required parts of any client/server application that involves a database as the server component.  If you want to see exactly what turning of one of the core parts of MDAC does to your system, follow the workaround of unregistering OLEDB32 from MS08-078.  Good luck trying to do anything functional with data of any type!

The cool thing about the newest release of Component Checker is that is can be used to check every OS installation in existence that might have a bad MDAC installation.  This includes all the variants of XP, 2003, and 2000 (2008 and Vista are left off this list intentionally since it is almost impossible to corrupt their data access stack).  All you have to do is run Component Checker, select “Perform analysis against a selected version” and the select your version of Windows.

You should get something that looks like this:

If you installation is clean, you will see nothing but matches above. 

So, you might ask, why do I have mismatches above?  Well, for that, I go back to the reference to MS08-078 above.  Component Checker is not smart enough to know that files that are LATER than the ones it is checking for are OK.   Unfortunately, due to the bad guys out there these days, it is pretty common to find later versions of the various binaries pushed out via Windows Update.

However, it is still pretty easy to check your installation.  Just look to make sure that the Mismatch Fields column has a version number less than the Version field:

(click on the image above for a larger view)

As you can see above, Component Checker is looking for 2.81.1117 and I have 2.81.1135 (MSADCE) and 2.81.1124 (MSADCO).  Good to go!

Published Sunday, December 21, 2008 8:49 PM by evanba

Everyday Adventures : Checkin’ those components!!