How-To Register or Unregister DLL and OCX Files

By Timothy Tibbetts

on 06/30/2023

Built into Windows 7, 8, and 10 is Regsvr32, a command-line app that can be used to register or unregister OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) controls including DLL and ActiveX controls in the Windows registry. In this article, we'll show you how to register and unregister a DLL file to fix Windows problems.

Command-line and PowerShell geeks shouldn't have any problems using Regsvr32. Here is what you need to know.

We suggest you create a restore point before you continue and or back up your registry. Open the command-line or PowerShell as an administrator.

regsvr32 [/n] [/i[:cmdline]] dllname

Register regsvr32 "path & filename of dll or ocx"
Unregister regsvr32 /u "path & filename of dll or ocx"

Possible options documented by Microsoft include:

/u - Unregisters server.
/s - Specifies regsvr32 to run silently and not display any message boxes.
/n - Specifies not to call DllRegisterServer. You must use this option with /i.
/i - cmdline : Calls DllInstall passing it an optional [cmdline]. When used with /u, it calls DLL uninstall.
dllname - Specifies the name of the DLL file that will be registered.
/? - Displays help at the command prompt.

Be sure to type in the path or change directories to where the DLL or OCX is located. To change directories, you want to use the cd command. For example, to change directories to C:WindowsSysWOW64, simply type in CD C:WindowsSysWOW64 with a space after cd.

If you're not into the command-line or PowerShell, we understand. Luckily, there are third-party freeware utilities that can do this for you. For us, there's only one that is freeware and portable, and that's RegDllView by Nirsoft

RegDllView will save you a lot of trouble typing away.