Yesiree bob - the best (THE BEST) tool for creating COM (Automation) objects (ala kixlib32) is to use Visual Studio 6 C++ (obviously) and the ATL (ActiveX Template Library) ... ATL IS NOT MFC (thank god) and doesn't require the use of the MFC runtimes ... (did I mention that I hate MFC ?!!!)

When starting a new project, select the ATL COM AppWizard, give your component a name and ATL will create a bare-bones COM component server for you ... Adding ATL classes (the objects themselves) is a snap, adding methods and properties is easy as well ... the wizard will automatically create your prototypes and your insert your function wrappers. This is were you can plug-in your code ...

The only thing the ATL wizard does not do (very well) is allow you to specify your method parameters. To do this, you need to learn IDL (Interface Definition Language) but with COM, it's good to know that anyway ... plus you only need to learn the bit that relates to specifying method parms ...

Would be glad to assist you in anyway I can ... maybe we can work-up a small project and step through it together (offline) ...

-Shawn