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shawn857

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Where to find low-cost Windows hosting sufficient to run my a custom dll/COM object

Hello, I'm looking for the lowest-cost, most bare-bones Windows hosting there is. All I need is to run my simple PHP script that invokes a COM object (it's a Windows DLL that generates on-demand codes for my users). That's all... I don't need to host any websites or anything. I've had one hosting company tell me already "Sorry, but most reputable hosts are not going to allow you to run a custom .dll in a shared hosting environment". That's disappointing. Would anyone have any ideas about this... or steer me in the right direction?

Thanks
    Shawn
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gr8gonzo
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shawn857

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Thanks Gonzo... so with VPS hosting, do I need to do all the configuration of the Windows server myself... or does it come ready for what I need "right out of the box"? I really don't know much about PHP, Windows IIS, and what not.

Thanks
   Shawn
Yes, you usually need to do the configuration yourself, but there are bundled installation packages that will take care of almost everything for you, like EasyPHP (www.easyphp.org).
Thanks Gonzo. I'm googling around and seeing that if the VPS comes with "Plesk", then it will be ready to go for my needs, yes?

Thanks
   Shawn
Yes, but chances are that Plesk will cost a little more. You said you need something bare-bones and Plesk is an entire hosting system control panel. You'll end up spending more time configuring Plesk than you would just installing a WAMP bundle like EasyPHP. You can literally have a WAMP VPS running 30 minutes or less from the time you read this. The WAMP bundles should take all of a full 60 seconds or so to install, and then from there, it's just a matter of putting your PHP scripts in the right spot.
Thanks Gonzo, now I see that there is a thing called "Turnkey ASP NET" on Lunux servers that can somehow run Windows DLL's. I know nothing about ASP, nor NET... is this true? If so, then I could get a lower-cost Linux server and use this Turnkey thing to run my DLL? If so, does my DLL have to be programmed in NET for this to work? It's an old DLL I bought probably 8 or 9 years ago and I think it was actually programmed in Visual Basic.

Thanks
    Shawn
The original link I posted also has VPS Linux servers. Their lowest-cost one is $0.99 cents per month, but it's very low-powered.

I think the Turnkey ASP.NET is actually a Linux distribution that comes with Mono, which is basically a framework for running .NET applications on non-Windows platforms. The VPS wouldn't be Turnkey, but you might be able to load it up with Mono and see if it takes your DLL. If you bought the DLL 8-9 years ago, then there's a chance it's not .NET. You can always throw it into a .NET decompiler like JetBrains dotPeek and it will tell you whether or not it's .NET code. Or you can post it here and I can run it through the decompiler (assuming there is no problem with posting the DLL here).

It's hard to say whether it would work or not. Typically, any Windows app isn't likely to be directly compatible/portable with non-Windows platforms because they tend to be built upon code that references components that are within Windows. The Mono project was designed to try and port the .NET framework to Linux, but if it's not a .NET library, then it probably would not work.
Thanks Gonzo.

Cheers
    Shawn