Need help with COM dll registration at runtime

Hello All,

I have only recently started getting my feet wet with COM and have run
into a couple of issues.
I'd appreciate any help that you provide. My reference will be one
article found at:
http://www.codeproject.com/com/com_in_c1.asp

Now, I downloaded the zip, compiled and ran it and everything went
well. Next, I tried to get
smart: I thought of putting the CLSID in a file (instead of having it
in the header file for the plug-in).

Here's where you'd find some background a little helpful. Atleast, so
I hope.
The idea is my clients would give me a set of such COM dlls, each with
its own CLSID, and
perhaps some other meta-information in a text file (XML, if I want to
be whacky!). I intend to parse
this configuration file (dlls would be placed in a predestined folder)
and load the dlls and ask them
do stuff from time to time.

So I changed the main enough to read the CLSID as a string from the
file, converted it to a CLSID
using a custon function (I do know about CLSIDFromString() but somehow
just couldn't get past
converting char [] to OLESTR or some such stupid problem) and passed
it to CoGetClassObject().
Note, I call a function to do register this dll, and uptio this,
things work fine. Actually, the CustomRegister() function
is also taken from the codeproject tutorial. However,
CoGetClassObject() fails saying:
"ClassFactory cannot supply requested class".

I'll put up some code as well:
------------


demoapp.cpp
--------------------

#include <windows.h>
#include <objbase.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "iptplugin.h"

#include "reg.h"
#include "clsid.h"

// Copyright: Wine sources...
void CLSIDFromstring(LPTSTR s, LPCLSID id)
{
    int i;
    BYTE table[256];
     /* quick lookup table */
    memset(table, 0, 256);

    for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
     table['0' + i] = i;
    }
    for (i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
     table['A' + i] = i+10;
     table['a' + i] = i+10;
    }

    /* in form {XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX} */

    id->Data1 = (table[s[1]] << 28 | table[s[2]] << 24 | table[s[3]]
<< 20 | table[s[4]] << 16 |
                table[s[5]] << 12 | table[s[6]] << 8 | table[s[7]] <<
4 | table[s[8]]);
    id->Data2 = table[s[10]] << 12 | table[s[11]] << 8 | table[s[12]]
<< 4 | table[s[13]];
    id->Data3 = table[s[15]] << 12 | table[s[16]] << 8 | table[s[17]]
<< 4 | table[s[18]];

    /* these are just sequential bytes */
    id->Data4[0] = table[s[20]] << 4 | table[s[21]];
    id->Data4[1] = table[s[22]] << 4 | table[s[23]];
    id->Data4[2] = table[s[25]] << 4 | table[s[26]];
    id->Data4[3] = table[s[27]] << 4 | table[s[28]];
    id->Data4[4] = table[s[29]] << 4 | table[s[30]];
    id->Data4[5] = table[s[31]] << 4 | table[s[32]];
    id->Data4[6] = table[s[33]] << 4 | table[s[34]];
    id->Data4[7] = table[s[35]] << 4 | table[s[36]];
}

void GetCLSIDFromFile(const char *path, char *out)
{
    if (out) {
        //*out = 0;
        FILE *fp = fopen(path, "r");
        if (fp) {
            fscanf(fp, "CLSID=%s%*", out);
            fclose(fp);
        }
    }
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    IPTPlugin *exampleObj;
    IClassFactory *classFactory;
    HRESULT hr;

    char guidBuf[ 80 ];
    GetCLSIDFromFile("C:\\users\\cplugins\\dlls\\plugin-conf.txt",
guidBuf);
    printf("CLSID (from config file) = %s\n", guidBuf);

    CLSID pluginCLSID = CLSID_NULL;
    //CLSIDFromstring(guidBuf, pluginCLSID);
    CLSIDFromstring(guidBuf, &pluginCLSID);
    stringFromCLSID(guidBuf, pluginCLSID);
    printf("Check: CLSID (from config file) = %s\n", guidBuf);
    REFCLSID ri = pluginCLSID;
    CustomRegister(ri);

    // We must initialize OLE before we do anything with COM objects.
NOTE:
    // some COM components, such as the IE browser engine, require that
you
    // use OleInitialize() instead. But our COM component doesn't require
this
    if (!CoInitialize(0))
    {
        // Get IPTPlugin.DLL's IClassFactory
        if ((hr = CoGetClassObject(ri
                                   /*ri*/,
                                   CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,
                                   0,
                                   IID_IClassFactory,
                                   (LPVOID *)&classFactory))) {
            MessageBox(0, "Can't get IClassFactory", "CoGetClassObject
error", MB_OK|MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);
            CustomUnregister();
        }
        else
        {
            // Create an IPTPlugin object
            if ((hr = classFactory->CreateInstance(0, IID_IPTPlugin, (LPVOID
*)&exampleObj)))
            {
                classFactory->Release();
                MessageBox(0, "Can't create IPTPlugin object", "CreateInstance
error", MB_OK|MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);
            }
            else
            {
                //char buffer[80];

                // Release the IClassFactory. We don't need it now that we have
the one
                // IPTPlugin we want
                classFactory->Release();

                // Call SetString to set the text "Hello world!"
                exampleObj->Initialize();
                exampleObj->Translate();
                exampleObj->Cleanup();

                // Release the IPTPlugin now that we're done with it
                exampleObj->Release();
            }
        }

        // When finally done with OLE, free it
        CoUninitialize();
    }
    else
        MessageBox(0, "Can't initialize COM", "CoInitialize error", MB_OK|
MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);

    CustomUnregister();
    return(0);
}
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