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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-22T00:25:48+00:00

I’m getting a bunch of errors on my build server: C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(847,9): warning MSB3644: The

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I’m getting a bunch of errors on my build server:

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(847,9): warning MSB3644: The reference assemblies for framework “.NETFramework,Version=v4.0” were not found. To resolve this, install the SDK or Targeting Pack for this framework version or retarget your application to a version of the framework for which you have the SDK or Targeting Pack installed. Note that assemblies will be resolved from the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) and will be used in place of reference assemblies. Therefore your assembly may not be correctly targeted for the framework you intend. [D:\adis\mercury\AdisFeeds\cache\Adis.Feeds.Cache.ConsoleManager\Adis.Feeds.Cache.ConsoleManager.csproj]

The problem is that I have already installed the .NET parts of the windows SDK 7.1. … I was especially careful to check the box next to the .net 4.0 reference assemblies.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what’s going wrong?

For the record I am using Nant to run the build scripts (ver 0.86) and nant.contrib (0.85) for the msbuild nant task.

Update
I was just running down that angle. I compiled the solution using msbuild with diagnostic logging on my dev machine and then again on the build server. Then I compared the logs.

Seems the significant difference there is the lack of any references to the \Program Files\References Assemblies path. Specifically in FrameworkPathOverride.

So I tried adding FrameworkPathOverride as a commandline parameter to msbuild. Unfortunately that just led me to the unfortunate discovery that the reference assemblies directories only seem to have the xml files in them. As in there is only mscorlib.xml. No mscorlib.dll

What the heck is going on?!?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Ok I found a solution that works. You need to do two things:

    1. First add FrameworkPathOverride as a commandline parameter and point it to the references assemblies directory.

    Something like 

      msbuild -p:FrameworkPathOverride="C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETFramework\v4.0"
    1. The second thing you need to do is find a full version of the reference assemblies directory. Since the copy installed by the windows SDK and the one installed by visual studio, I just copied mine from my development machine. Works fine.

    One final note: the reason this might have happened to me in the first place is that our build server is a nice old windows server 2003 one. Too old for the windows SDK install to cope with?

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