COM objects load in MVC project when running on development server but NOT on IIS?

Question

I am referencing a COM API in my MVC 3 project, and when I run the project on VS development server I can interact with the API fine. However, when I run on IIS 7.5, the API only returns null objects. No error is thrown it simply returns null for everything.

I have no idea if there are security issues surrounding COM, I assumed any user on a machine could interact with a COM reference installed on the machine?

Answer 1

COM is prone to permissions/rights issues when used from a Service (IIS is just a special one)... IF the COM objects do something "desktop-like" (ie Excel or similar) this is even more locked down since Vista...

You could try to circumvent that somehow but I wouldn't recommend that...