Tech: CAPICOM & Quicktime?

Subject: Tech: CAPICOM & Quicktime?
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Dec 09 - 10:27 PM

I see listed in my programs something called CAPICOM and an update sub-file. When I looked for info on it, it seems to be an outdated MS thing for developers to use for certain applications. On one board someone had just downloaded a new version of QuickTime (this was in 2000) and wondered if it came in on that. I haven't done any downloading of new Quicktime, but I have noticed, today, that every time I try to listen to something which requires QT, it crashes my browser. Sometimes Firefox can get it all back up but other times I get a "This is embarrassing" message that it can't do that.

My questions are can I safely delete CAPICOM? And, is it somehow related to QT?

Thanks, folks. I told my Rog I wasn't going to delete until I check with you all.

kat

Subject: RE: Tech: CAPICOM & Quicktime?
From: Amos
Date: 31 Dec 09 - 10:37 PM

From Wikipedia:

CAPICOM is a discontinued ActiveX control created by Microsoft to help expose a select set of Microsoft Cryptographic Application Programming Interface (CryptoAPI) functions through Microsoft Component Object Model (COM). It was intended to enable every environment that supports ActiveX to use Microsoft Cryptographic technologies, including web pages that are opened with Microsoft Internet Explorer or any other web browser that supports ActiveX.[1]
CAPICOM can be used to digitally sign data, inspect, verify and display their digital signature and/or digital certificate, add or remove certificates to or from the certificate stores, and finally, to encrypt or decrypt data.[1]
CAPICOM Version 2.1.0.2, the latest and last version of CAPICOM, is officially supported on Windows Vista.[2][3] However, Microsoft has announced that CAPICOM is discontinued and is no longer being developed. Microsoft suggests replacing CAPICOM with .NET Framework's X509 Cryptographic Classes and a number of other alternatives.[4]


I suspect you can delete it, but, ya know, I doan doo Windoze....


A

Subject: RE: Tech: CAPICOM & Quicktime?
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Dec 09 - 10:44 PM

I'll bet you don't do floorz either, right?:-)

Thanks, Amos, I had seen that.

Subject: RE: Tech: CAPICOM & Quicktime?
From: Simon G
Date: 31 Dec 09 - 10:49 PM

Ending the capicom process won't do any harm, if something is using it it just won't be able to encrypt or decrypt all of a sudden.