After a long wait, Windows Vista was finally released for general use early this year (January 2007). This Vista release comprises only those Visual Basic 6.0 (VB 6.0) files that are required for “It Just Works” compatibility of older VB 6.0 applications. Due to this limited compatibility, a number of VB 6.0 files, including ‘mci32.ocx’, are not shipped with the Vista version. Therefore, if you are installing an application that uses one or more of the left-out VB 6.0 files, you must ensure that these files are deployed in Vista along with the application. Otherwise, you may receive errors every time you access the application. For instance, you may receive runtime mci32 Vista errors if you try to run an application using the mci32.ocx file and the file is not present on the system.
What is MCI32.ocx?
Before learning how to fix MCI32.ocx errors, let’s first have a look at the features of the MCI32.ocx file. Media Control Interface or MCI belongs to the Windows Application Programming Interface (API). MCI enables programs on your system to control multimedia devices, such as CD-ROM drives, installed on your computer. MCI enables programmers to develop programs that can work with many different types of multimedia files. MCI also helps in developing programs that can record sounds when commands are passed to them as strings.
Multimedia control is performed in Windows systems with the help of the MCI32.ocx file. Where OCX is a Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and Component Object Model (COM) based software module. OCX modules help in adding certain desired features or control in applications that call on them. OCX controls can be called on both 16-bit and 32-bit platforms, which makes them portable across different platforms.
Repair MCI32 Vista Error
By default the MCI32.ocx file does not exist on the Vista operating system. Therefore, if you try to run an application that uses the file, you may receive the following error:
Run-time Error '339' component ‘MCI.32.OCX' or one of its dependencies is not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid
The first and the easiest method to solve the error is to first uninstall, and then, reinstall the application that is causing the problem. Reinstalling the application will install all the required files including DLL and OCX files and may resolve the problem.
Note: When you uninstall, you may want to use a good registry cleaner to remove all related registry entries and files from the PC to ensure that you do a clean uninstall.
In case you receive errors even after reinstalling the application, then check whether the MCI32.ocx file is located in the correct folder. In Windows Vista, the file must be placed in the C:\Windows\System32 folder, where C: is the drive on which the operating system is installed. If the file is not here, then you may either search for and download the file from the Internet or copy the file from another computer and place it in the system32 folder.
If you receive errors even after copying the file, then to fix the problem you will have to manually register the file on the system. To register the file, open command prompt on your Vista system. Next, type regsvr32.exe C:\windows\system32\MCI32.OCX and press Enter to register the file.
MCI32.ocx file was used in earlier Windows operating systems, including Windows XP, to perform multimedia control. This file is not shipped by default with the Windows Vista operating system. Due to this, Vista users may encounter runtime errors when they try to run applications using the file. To fix this error, you may need to reinstall the application to ensure that all necessary files, including MCI32.ocx’ are copied to and registered on your Vista system. However, if this does not solve the problem, then you will have to copy the MCI32.ocx file to the system32 folder of your PC and then manually register the file in the registry.