Jumping in this thread late ...

The ability to distribute COM or ActiveX components without registration is not unique to the .NET technique demonstrated by Ken in his video.

Christian pointed out in message #1012012 that XP SP2 and Windows 2003 Server both support the ability to create XML manifest files that contain registry information for the components your application is using. In brief, these newer versions of Windows look for registry entries in an XML file with the same name as the running app FIRST and if this file is not present (or if its present but doesn't contain the requested entries), THEN Windows looks in the registry.

This is COOL because it gives one a safe and seamless way to distribute COM and ActiveX components without needing to update the registry.

Malcolm