A list of windows COM objects?

Hiya I just want to do some windows script host scripts, and I know that it is possible to interface with this thing called "COM" by using the WScript.createObject() method. What I don't know is what objects are available for instantiating with this method. My google-fu only shows me the thousand and one sophisticated methods available for instantiating and communicating with COM objects. There is one stack overflow answer with a powershell script which supposedly lists /currently available/ com objects. What I am insterested in is a list of objects that can reasonably be expected to be available by default on most machines with some version of windows installed. This appears to be a tall order. In particular what I am interested in is any /default/ available COM objects which may be used for image resizing and cropping. I want to know if this is possible without installing some external third party utility like image magick.

Your best bet is probably to use that powershell script (or <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7007">Microsoft's OLE View</a>) to view what is installed on a machine after a fresh install of Windows.

There is no "standard list", unfortunately. It even changes depending on what version of Windows you have installed. The most comprehensive answer would be to install a collection of Windows OSs (XP, Vista, 7, maybe 8) and find the intersection of the lists.

Alas, that is a lot of work for a basically investigative procedure. If there is a particular component or task you're trying to find out about, you might ask a new question about just that. Or, you could simply try it on some clean installs of Windows.