ActiveX Mysteries

I have some lingering questions about ActiveX that I am hoping someone can resolve for me. I recently acquired a computer and was installing something (can't remember what), and I noticed that during the installation it flashed across the installer that the program was installing ActiveX (not components). I could be wrong, but I think the program was DirectX, which I believe is contained in a standard Windows XP SP 2/3 installation (the OS for this PC). I was installing DirectX to make sure that I had the latest version. Questions are:

1. Is ActiveX technically the framework of support for ActiveX controls or are the controls themselves what is considered ActiveX?
2. If I were having trouble with broken ActiveX controls (I'm not, but I have had this problem before), is there a way to repair the framework for ActiveX (I am guessing SFC /SCANNOW repairs this?)? I am mostly interested in knowing if there is a way to install the support framework for ActiveX components without running SFC /SCANNOW.

ActiveX is a little bit confusing to me. It has a name like a typical program, but as far as I can tell, it can't be downloaded and installed in a standalone fashion like, for example, DirectX.

MS Office (Office Outllook too) seems to have hoards of A-X type controls available for doc "developers" for use within the program, and I did at one time have a problem with some of them. Actually for a short time I couldn't even open Office programs.

This was brought on when I started messing around with an uninstaller (not Revo or Comodo) and removed the Windows Installer on the advice of the program. To this day, I'm not completely sure how I fixed the problem, but, after a couple of boots restored the internet connection and then after reinstalling Windows Installer, I think the repair tool in office covered much of it (opening the programs). In some of the Office files, I also have some video controls that use Shockwave, and I do recall reinstalling SW too. Additionally, PC wasn't finding Flash, even though it was there, so that was another reinstallation. All in all, there were several programs that would not open and which I had to reinstall eventually...this I assume due to a broken dependency caused by removing Windows installer.

Anyway, the whole thing is a little bit perplexing to me. Based on my current knowledge, I am just not sure why there is no direct installation/reinstallation/repair kit for ActiveX. For me, this is I think one of the few remaining mysteries in Windows XP that I would really like to resolve...

 

Here buddy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveX, http://www.microsoft.com/security/resources/activex-whatis.aspx.

 

NickT...

Thanks amigo. It helped to read it again, and it solidified what I understood previously...

Just see a substantial number of problems that appear to me to be related somehow to ActiveX controls, especially with MS Office and Office Outlook. I always wondered why MS didn't design the UI work environment element of Windows around ActiveX (or why it's not commonly understood as built around ActiveX if it is build around it) and why there isn't more of a support knowledge base for understanding it and its place in Windows and in other programs. Seems like MS' solutions for ActiveX difficulties are FixIts, Hotfixes, SFC /SCANNOW, or Repair Installations or The MS Office repair tool in the case of MS Office. Yet nothing really exactly points to ActiveX as the problem specifically it seems to me (or at least not that the average user like me would understand as such) when an ActiveX control is broken. I don't know, just seems like an ActiveX console like Java has or something might have helped users understand A-X better. From there could have a scanner to see what controls are installed on a PC and their associations and then maybe a way to launch SFC /SCANNOW if one is broken or whatever...

Noticed CCleaner goes after ActiveX related files on PCs with the Registry Cleaner, and I find myself musing over how often cleaners break a control. Don't think it's that often with ActiveX that a control is broken by a cleaner, but perhaps sometimes...