Merge Modules

Merge modules were an idea that has been largely abandoned over recent years.

What merge modules represented was a way to distribute commonly used files with all of their associations (COM, registry keys etc). Microsoft originally released a number of merge modules for common Microsoft runtime files. Most of the modules introduced ICE validation errors into packages but with the introduction of Windows XP Microsoft walked away from the idea of allowing the updating of commonly used files by anyone outside of the firm.

Instead, Windows XP introduced Windows File Protection to prevent shard files being overwritten. As it was only really Microsoft who produced shared libraries in this way, the use of Merge Modules has slowly died a death.

Merge Module Finder

For organisations that do use Merge Modules (and have policy of inserting merge modules wherever possible) a freeware utility