My project references 3 different versions of mscorlib.dll

Question

I noticed that one of my projects references 3 different versions of mscorlib:

1. 1.0.5000.0
2. 2.0.0.0
3. 4.0.0.0

This post about "mscorlib.dll & System.dll" helped me understand what mscorlib is for, but I'm wondering whether it's normal/necessary for an application to require multiple versions of this assembly. Perhaps this happened because I upgraded my project from VS 2005 to VS 2010.

Is it possible for me to make my project only reference the 4.0.0.0 version of mscorlib?

Answer 1

There are many reasons why you could end up like that. If you only want v4.0, make sure you

• Start with a fresh project in VS 2010
• Import all your existing code files into this new project
• If you have third party references (such Oracle data access), make sure you use their .Net v4.0 dlls

Alternatively, you can remove references to all components that might be referencing older versions of mscorlib. This may not be possible as all vendors may not upgrade their components to totally v 4.0

Personally, I wouldn't worry about them unless they are root cause of a major bug (which is unlikely).