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I swear the more Microsoft "evolves" Visual Studio, the more ignorant the entire process becomes.
I have a Windows Service with 3 class libraries in it. I went into the properties for each class library and set the platform target to x64. I did this same thing to the Windows Service as well as to the Test Console project I added to verify everything.
I can run the console application on my Windows 2008 R2 x64 server with no issues but the stupid installer keeps bombing out and telling me that I have a bad image. I did ensure that I had set the target platform of the installer to x64.
I have no idea idea was this stupid thing would be bombing out and would really appreciate any insights. I do reference other DLLs and those might be x86 but I thought if the main libraries were set properly that things would work...
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SOLUTION: If you are on IIS7, Right Click/ Advanced Settings on the Specific Application Pool of the website and select True on Enable 32-Bit Applications. It should work.
A System. BadImageFormatException error often occurs when a 64-bit assembly is opened by a 32-bit application. In this case, Visual Studio is a 32-bit application and the Design view is attempting to load a 64-bit assembly. Visual Studio assemblies are located in the project references tree.
Date Time: 6/8/2014 10:57:55 AM: System.InvalidOperationException: Attempt to load Oracle client libraries threw BadImageFormatException. This problem will occur when running in 64 bit mode with the 32 bit Oracle client components installed. ---> System.BadImageFormatException: An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format.
When you have one assembly trying to use another assembly, and they don’t have matching bitness (x64 or x86), then you’ll get an exception: either BadImageFormatException or FileLoadException. If your project references another assembly, and the bitness doesn’t match, you’ll get this exception:
The Gurobi .NET assembly (e.g. gurobiXX.NET.dll) is compiled for AnyCPU (64-bit preferred). Your application needs to ensure that the proper native library (gurobiXX.dll) is used at runtime for the target platform. A BadImageFormatException occurs if you mix 32/64 bit libraries at the moment when the .NET runtime loads the native library.
I have finally figured this out – it has NOTHING to do with architecture, references or any other nonsense and everything to do with the installer itself. As this article explains – the Visual Studio Installer, by default, uses a 32 bit DLL and that is what causes the failures.
To overcome this problem, simply follow these steps:
That is it - save your MSI file in Orca and then deploy it – the x64 installation should work without any further issues.
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I just ran into this issue myself, in Visual Studio 2017, building an installer for an x64 version of an application that's been x86 for a long time.
I don't doubt that Ken's answer is definitive, but it occurred to me that as the Custom Actions are called by the installer, not by the installed application, there is no need, in my case at least, for the project containing the Custom Actions to have the same bitness as the rest of the application, as its classes are never instantiated by the application itself.
So I changed the platform for that project alone back to x86, and rebuilt the installer.
It all 'just worked'.
This depends, of course, on having Custom Actions that are completely isolated from the rest of the solution. Quite a relief not to have to use Orca however.
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This error happened to me installing a .Net 4.5+ service to a 64-bit machine.
Installation fails with a BadImageFormatException.
For me, the solution was to go to the service project properties, and change the build platform to "Any CPU", and also uncheck the "Prefer 32bit" checkbox that was checked by default (see also what does it mean).
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