Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {C1F400A0-3F08-11D3-9F0B-006008039E37} fai

 

Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {C1F400A0-3F08-11D3-9F0B-006008039E37} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered

Applies to: Microsoft Windows Server 2008/2008 R2/2010 Operating Systems

This one required more investigation than I would’ve thought.  So much so, that I nearly came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be able to do video transcoding.  Fear not though, it is possible and is a straightforward problem to resolve.

In this instance, I was just trying to use a webcam that was attached to a Windows Server machine, which seems like it should just be a plug-n-play type of task.

However, when trying to view the video from the camera, I had encountering the following error message:

1	Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {C1F400A0-3F08-11D3-9F0B-006008039E37} failed due to the following error: 80040154 Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG)).

Problem

This is a straightforward COM error message that basically says that it doesn’t have information to load a particular component (ex. a program isn’t installed, is corrupt, etc).  This class ID happens to be associated with Microsoft Windows SDK’s “Sample Grabber Filter” that isn’t included on these versions of Windows.  This component is included in qedit.dll, which is what is needed to resolve this issue.

Resolution

The easiest resolution to find a version of qedit.dll from a version of Windows that does include it, such as Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8 (basically, any non-server OS).

1. Copy the qedit.dll file to the C:\Windows\system32 directory of your server OS.
   • 32-bit (x86): C:\Windows\system32
   • 64-bit (x64): C:\Windows\SysWOW64
2. Run the following command at the command prompt as administrator: regsvr32 C:\Windows\system32\qedit.dll.
3. That’s it!  Your program should now be able to load the component and function as expected.