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Asked: 2026-06-18T14:57:45+00:00

I have a two project .NET 4.5 C# solution, one project (projectA) is a

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I have a two project .NET 4.5 C# solution, one project (projectA) is a class library that has 5 referenced .dll (non-COM) files. These files are 32/64-bit specific, so I have two include/ folders in my build path (include/x86/ and include/x64/) with their respective .dll files in each. The .dll are named exactly the same between the 32 and 64-bit versions. The other project (projectB) is a console app that references projectA. When I configure to Debug (or Release, it doesn’t matter) x64 mode and build, everything works. It copies all 5 .dll to the bin/x64/ directory and the program works as expected. However, when I switch configuration to x86 mode and build, only two of the five .dll are copied over to the bin/x86/ directory and the program obviously doesn’t work. It throw the FileNotFoundException and complains that the assembly isn’t loaded because it cannot find it in the bin/ directory.

If I manually copy (or use xcopy in post build event) the missing .dll files over to the bin/x86/ folder, the program works. So it appears the issue has something to do with Visual Studios (2012 Update 1) not correctly copying the files during a build. All 5 references in projectA are set to Copy: Local and their path in the Properties box in Visual studios is correct for both x86 and x64 modes. When I build projectA by itself, in either x86-64 mode, all 5 .dll are correctly copied to the correct bin/ folder. So the issue has to also deal with projectB referencing projectA.

Here is an excerpt from the projectA.csproj file:

<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|x64'">
   <PlatformTarget>x64</PlatformTarget>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|x86'">
   <PlatformTarget>x86</PlatformTarget>
</PropertyGroup>

<ItemGroup>
<Reference Include="BaseCommon">
  <HintPath>include\$(Platform)\BaseCommon.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="BaseDataAccess">
  <HintPath>include\$(Platform)\BaseDataAccess.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="BaseError">
  <HintPath>include\$(Platform)\BaseError.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="BaseTof">
  <HintPath>include\$(Platform)\BaseTof.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="MassSpecDataReader">
  <HintPath>include\$(Platform)\MassSpecDataReader.dll</HintPath>
</Reference>
<Reference Include="System" />

Any ideas on the problem? I assume i could do the xcopy command, but that seems like it shouldn’t be necessary, especially if it correctly works in x64 mode.

Tested with windows 8 and windows 7 64-bit on three different computers.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I solved the issue after realizing that some of the .dll files were the wrong version. I used ildasm.exe on the .dll, open up the manifests, and realized that the some of the .dll were referencing the wrong version of the other .dll files. So msbuild did not perform the copy of the binaries files as expected. The reason why the code worked when I manually copied the missing .dll files was that the API didn’t change between the two versions.

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