This error is from a machine compiling a vb6 dll which suddenly stopped working and used to work fine.
I've seen this on the net a lot the solutions that i could find and were relevant to me. Including these ones which seemed promising from http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-140158.html and one from http://www.excelfox.com/forum/f2/missing-mscomctllib-15/
Both of these suggested re-registering the MSCOMCTL.OCX
But after following both of these I still had the problem. After hours of searching and trying different things I realised that there were some updates which had been installed and waiting a reboot of the machine because of corporate policy.
The Answer
I rebooted the machine and waited for the updates to finish installing. After that the dll compiled without a problem.