FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo() incorrect in Console Application

Question

I'm getting some serious weirdness using FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo() and was hoping somebody might be able to help.

The basics of the issue is that I am iterating through all the files in a folder calling GetVersionInfo() on each. There are about 300 files. This works ok for all but 2 of the files. For these DLLs I am getting comepletely incorrect info back from GetVersionInfo().

In order to eliminate all other variables, I extracted this call into a simple test app and it still got the same problem. However, if I built the test app as a Windows Application (it was a Console Application initially) then the data came back correct.

Just to clarify, the incorrect data coming back when running as a Console App is not simply null info like you would get if the file didn't contain version data. It contained reasonable data, but just the wrong data. It's as if it's reading it from a different file. I've looked for a file that contains matching version data, but can't find one.

Why is this simple call functioning differently if built as a Console Application rather than a Windows Application?

If anyone can help with this I would be very grateful.

Rgds, Andy

-- Code Added

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace test
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string file = "C:\\ProblemFile.dll";
            FileVersionInfo version = FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo(file);
            string fileName = version.FileName;
            string fileVersion = version.FileVersion;

            Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} : {1}", fileName, fileVersion));
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

This behaviour seems weird indeed. Could it be that the Console application does not load the DLL from the same place as the WinForms application does? This would mean that GetVersionInfo uses some other API than just Win32 CreateFile (maybe going through some DLL resolver mechanism, side-by-side or whatever); remember that under the covers, version.dll will be executing your request, not the CLR itself.

Looking at FileVersionInfo through Reflector points in another direction yet:

public static unsafe FileVersionInfo GetVersionInfo(string fileName)
{
    // ...
    int fileVersionInfoSize = UnsafeNativeMethods.GetFileVersionInfoSize(fileName, out num);
    FileVersionInfo info = new FileVersionInfo(fileName);
    if (fileVersionInfoSize != 0)
    {
        byte[] buffer = new byte[fileVersionInfoSize];
        fixed (byte* numRef = buffer)
        {
            IntPtr handle = new IntPtr((void*) numRef);
            if (!UnsafeNativeMethods.GetFileVersionInfo(fileName, 0, fileVersionInfoSize, new HandleRef(null, handle)))
            {
                return info;
            }
            int varEntry = GetVarEntry(handle);
            if (!info.GetVersionInfoForCodePage(handle, ConvertTo8DigitHex(varEntry)))
            {
                int[] numArray = new int[] { 0x40904b0, 0x40904e4, 0x4090000 };
                foreach (int num4 in numArray)
                {
                    if ((num4 != varEntry) && info.GetVersionInfoForCodePage(handle, ConvertTo8DigitHex(num4)))
                    {
                        return info;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    return info;
}

As you can see there, some interesting dance is going on with code pages. What if the DLLs you inspected had several version information resources attached to them? Depending on the culture of the program calling into GetVersionInfo, I guess that the code page related calls could return other results?

Take the time to check the resources of the DLLs and make sure that there is only one language/code page for the version information. It might point you at the solution, I hope.