Question

I am getting following error:

"COM object that has been separated from its underlying RCW cannot be used."

I am sure the problem is because COM object is being called not on the thread it has been created – STA. I tried to implement IDisposable but it has not worked for me.

There is a couple of posts dealing with similar problem but which still do not solve my issue:

Is it safe to call an RCW from a finalizer?
Release Excel Object In My Destructor

Could anyone post an example/explain how COM object should be correctly accessed from another thread?

Here is minimal code which shows the problem:

using System;
using System.Threading;

namespace Test.ComInterop
{
    public class Program
    {
        MyCom _myCom;

        [STAThread]
        static void Main( string[] args )
        {
            new Program();
        }

        public Program()
        {
            _myCom = new MyCom();

            // this method call works
            string version = _myCom.ComMethod();

            StartThread();
        }

        private void StartThread()
        {
            Thread t = new Thread( UIRun );
            t.SetApartmentState( ApartmentState.STA );
            t.Start();
        }

        void UIRun()
        {
            TestUI window = new TestUI();
            window.Show();

            // this method call fails
            window.Title = _myCom.ComMethod();

            window.Closed += ( sender2, e2 ) 
                => window.Dispatcher.InvokeShutdown();

            System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run();
        }
    }

    class MyCom
    {
        private dynamic _com;
        public MyCom()
        {
            _com = Activator.CreateInstance(
                Type.GetTypeFromProgID( "Excel.Application" ) );
        }

        public string ComMethod()
        {
            return (string) _com.Version;
        }
    }    
}

Answer 1

The problem is your program’s startup thread. It creates the COM object, starts a thread, then exits. As part of the cleanup of that main thread, .NET calls CoUninitialize() and that’s the end of the COM object. Getting that error is the expected result.

There’s just no point in letting your main startup thread exit like that. Let it do the work now done by your own thread, problem solved.