More and more of my customers are (rightly) installing 64-bit versions of Windows for critical systems like Domain Controllers, File Servers, and Database Servers. The increased memory access for user-mode programs (and increased file cache size for file servers) is a huge help for heavily used systems.
But there are are still a lot of tools only written for 32-bit systems. That is to say, MMC consoles and VBScripts that just act… funny on 64-bit servers. So, here’s some errors, and how to quickly fix them.
For VBScripts, you’ll often just get an error similar to:
scriptname.vbs(48, 1) Microsoft VBScript runtime error:
ActiveX component can't create object:
It doesn’t matter what the object is, and if you register the supporting DLL or reinstall the application that provides the function, it still won’t work. The fix? c:\windows\syswow64\cscript scriptname.vbs or c:\windows\syswow64\wscript scriptname.vbs, depending on if you want it run in a console (cscript) or popup windows (wscript). I personally write everything for cscript, cause I can redirect the output to a log file. This trick I found here, and reminded me to write this up with my next fix.
For MMC consoles, what often happens is you just don’t see the tab you’re looking for, or you can’t even find the console to add the snap-in to the MMC. No error messages, and nothing shows up that you’re looking for. Luckily, this is also an easy fix. Click the Start button, then “Run…” then type in “mmc /32″ or “mmc -32″ in the box and click “OK”. You’ll now be presented with an empty MMC, but you can now add the snap-ins you want, and the 32-bit programs (such as the “Additional Account Information” from acctinfo.dll from the Windows Resource Kit Tools) will have their tabs show up properly.