...There is *NOTHING* on the interweb about using COM objects and DEP being an issue. ..
Umm, as per my post above, did you have a chance to look at
post #3? Within that post it mentions the NXCOMPAT flag (and DEP) and links to the following article (dated 2007-12-13):
http://blogs.msdn.co...c-compiler.aspx
The first paragraph states:
The C# compiler in Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework (csc.exe) is now generating PE files with the NXCOMPAT bit set. What is that bit and who cares, you ask? You may very well care if your application interops with native binaries or exposes a plugin model to 3rd parties. First, some background...
"Native binaries" like the MiniBroker COM object.
My attempt to create a MiniBroker-based Text-To-Speech driver caused me to bump into a problem with 64-bit Vista (driver development in 2009). I was using SSDP (Simple Server Discovery Protocol) to automatically connect, maintain, and reconnect (in the event of connection loss) to a Premise Server without having to use polling. It worked a treat on 32-bit XP and failed on 64-bit Vista. I assumed it was Vista's firewall because sometimes SSDP would work.
Anyway, that issue was wasting my time so I skipped it and continued with driver development. Ultimately, I discovered it was not possible to run TTS as a service in Vista (or Win 7). However, Property Subscriptions did work for my
SYSTester application on 64-bit Vista (when SSDP was working).
According to this post, John discovered Property Subscriptions fail on Win Server 2008 and, being in the same code family, Win 7 64-bit.
PS
I'll try SYSTester again on Vista 64 and see what happens (still no Win 7 in my home).