"Could not load file or assembly or one of its dependencies. Access is denied."

Question

I'm trying to debug the following exception:-

System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'My.Assembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=........' or one of its dependencies. Access is denied.

The code is impersonated in a COM service, but the assembly is present in the application directory and the impersonated user has read permissions to it. Fusion isn't logging anything for the assembly, and procmon doesn't mention the file or any ACCESS DENIED events at all. Is there any reason other than permissions on the DLL itself that an assembly load might fail as above?

(This isn't a web application, by the way.)

Answer 1

Make sure you have access to the assembly and all its assemblies you need.

The other issue is if the assembly it is looking for assumes it is in the GAC then it might not be able to find it. If that is the case you can usually get around it by copying the assembly out to where ever the process needing it is located.