Microsoft DLL Help Database

June 14, 2008 (Last Modified: June 15, 2008)

Ever wonder how a version of a particular DLL got on your computer? Ever wonder what products ship what version of a DLL? Microsoft has a handy online tool to figure this out (at least for the DLLs that they put out): The Microsoft DLL Help Database . For example, using the help database I see that version 2.80.1022.0 is the newest version of msador15.dll and ships in the following products:

MDAC 2.8
Small Business Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 Data Center
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise
Windows Server 2003 Standard
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition

The help database also tells me the date and size of the DLL for each release so you can double check suspicious DLLs if someone is attempting to hijack a system dll for nefarious purposes.

Just a neat tool and I had nothing else to blog about today.