Windows 11 ARM Active X compatibility

Data point for anyone landing here: it can work.

We just got a vendor's 32-bit ActiveX imaging control, and a 32-bit Java applet, running in Edge IE mode on a Windows 11 ARM64 laptop. Confirmed with systeminfo | findstr /C:"System Type", which showed ARM64-based PC.

So "ActiveX can't run on ARM" doesn't seem to hold, at least for 32-bit (x86) controls. My guess is IE mode runs them in an emulated 32-bit process, but I haven't found official docs on it. 64-bit controls may be a different story.

What actually blocked us wasn't ARM. It was IE Protected Mode. The page downloaded every file fine, but registering the .ocx kept failing, even with Edge run as admin. Protected Mode had silently redirected the installer's writes from C:\ProgramData into:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Virtualized\C\ProgramData\...

To check, open an admin Command Prompt and run:

where /r C:\ yourcontrol.ocx

If the path has INetCache\Virtualized in it, that's the problem. What fixed it:

1. Copy the folder to the real location: xcopy "<Virtualized path>\VendorFolder" "C:\ProgramData\VendorFolder" /E /I /H /Y
2. Register with the 32-bit regsvr32: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe "C:\ProgramData\VendorFolder\...\yourcontrol.ocx"
3. Add the site to Trusted sites (inetcpl.cpl → Security → Trusted sites) and make sure "Enable Protected Mode" is unchecked for that zone.

After that the control loaded normally in IE mode on ARM64.