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I have a pop up that opens when I start windows that says odhost in the upper left corner, then a big red circle with an X in it, and says CoCreateInstance failed status is 0x80040154 and an OK button.. what the heck is it and how do I get rid of it.. ran all the anti-virus programs I could, shows nothing, did a regedit search and nothing.. ?

Google "CoCreateInstance failed status is 0x80040154"
Ther are many hits....
They may make sense to you, but not to me!!

Some program you have installed has become corrupted. Some hits suggest it might be a Linksys router or wireless adapter. When did it start, did you try a windows restore point, what was the last thing you installed before it started?

not sure which program, but I do have a NETGEAR wireless router? will check it to see if that might be the culprit.. and I'll google it up to see what it says..

Try this
http://www.dependencywalker.com/

When was the last time you rebooted the router?
Power it off for a minute and then power it back up.

tried that a number of times.. no workey.. thanks..

cocreateinstance is how a program starts a COM host program (COM = Common Object Model).

For example you want to draw a graph in MS Word. Instead of including that graphics ability in Word, Word uses MS Excel graphing by calling Excel with cocreateinstance.

MS is not the only company making COM host or user programs. So cocreateinstance failure would be a new user program installed and it can't find the requested host; or, the requested host program was uninstalled/removed, then problem began. Sometimes a version upgrade of host might cause a failure.

Cheers,

great, so how do I find it and eliminate it? thanks.. would it be in the system startup files? maybe trying to start a program that isn't there?

Task Manager doesn't give the programs name?

Task manager gives a name of any EXE running but also a partial list of any DLL running like a program. Howerer the OS may have any number of other DLL and other modules like OCX loaded and available for programs to use. Co Create Instance appears to be a function call from an unknown DLL. From the name I presume it is trying to create a window to display some information but is failing.

if you know what DLL or EXE you suspected you could query it with the dependency walker to see if this function exists within the package. Without an educated guess, you might need to resort to a system tool to learn all the loaded DLLS and then search them out to query each one individually, a large job at least if not an impossible task.

Another method is use Sysedit (did you say which version of Windows you are using) (system configuration in Win 7, see administrative tools) to systematically disable startup and services items until you discover which one makes the error go away (visit the land of 1000 reboots). The event viewer may have captured the error and may have the name of the module that caused it but its kind of a haystack to search

thanks.. will give it a stab.. and let you know if it takes the full 1000 reboots.. ha..

You could try Sysinternals Process Explorer to see everything that is running on your system. It is like task manager on steroids and will allow you to stop and/or kill individual threads or whole processes. The last place I got it was from Microsoft's download section. They (Microsoft) actually recommended it.

CeaSaR

will check that out this morning.. another question tho, when I open my Pictures folder, everything is SMALL, so I click view and make them extra large icons, as soon as I close and reopen, or even open a folder within pictures, it reverts back to small .. how can I LOCK it extra large? damn microsoft programmers like to screw with people constantly..

"You could try Sysinternals Process Explorer to see everything that is running on your system."

this is probably a function call from a running process. you will see the process listed but not the function calls it is capable if making to external modules. If you are lucky, you will see a process running, then crash after the error message is displayed. Since others have this error, I'm thinking it is OS level or a very common program.

Damn that programmer that titled his error message window and failed to include the name of the program that created it in the title. While the error is being displayed, it may have a trail back to the program that displayed it.