Menu
I'm looking for tips/suggestions/insights to help debug an on application load issue; Could not load file or assembly...
The solution/project where I'm experiencing this issue is a conversion from a working copy in Visual Studio 2008 to the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. The conversion process appeared to be successful, and all the solution projects are set to Framework 4.
The exception is on a 3rd party component (a graphics processing library), but any answers could possibly help others with any troublesome DLL.
Could not load file or assembly 'Aurigma.GraphicsMill.DLL' or one of its dependencies. is not a valid Win32 application. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800700C1)
What's confusing about this exception is the additional text: is not a valid Win32 application.
The full exception stack trace is up on PasteBin, but doesn't seem to shed much more light on the issue...
What I have tried so far with no success:
I've also had no luck with it hitting any debugger breakpoints on application load.
589
There are some workarounds for this issue: The dll file may not be in /bin folder. Just copy the dll file to /bin folder or set this preference Copy Local = True from Visual Studio. If the problem persists, check if the version of the assembly that is referenced is different than the version it is looking for.
In summary if you get the "Could not load file or assembly error", this means that either your projects or their references were built with a reference to a specific version of an assembly which is missing from your bin directory or GAC.
This error usually means that the assembly was not found. Try verifying that the file exists in the directory where your application is running.
I have found the cause of this issue to be that because you have switched to .net v4, you are now using a new application pool in IIS7 specificially for asp.net v4 (the pool itself is called 'ASP.NET v4.0')
In the advanced settings section of the application pool, set 'Enable 32-bit Applications' to true and your problem DLL will now load as expected.
Obviously you should do the same if your web application has its own application pool.
If you are using Windows Server 2008 (not R2) see this post on how to assign correct permissions for your application pool identity
186
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
