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BadImageFormatException: Could not load file or assembly ... bad format - Only with Web Application

I am working on a Web Application on a Windows 8 64 bit machine using multiple existing libraries. I want to use two C# DLLs referencing one native DLL. Both C# DLLs are compiled for 64bit usage and tested in test applications.
My web application references both C# DLLs and is supposed to run on IIS 8.
I added the two C# DLLs as references to the project and the native DLL manually to the bin folder of the web app. Whenever I build and run the solution I get the exception shown in the title.
I know that this is a sign for a problem regarding 32 bit and 64 bit code running in one process. Therefore I tried all different build configurations but the result never changed.
I created a console application doing exactly what I'm trying in the web app and it worked flawlessly.
The Web application with the exact same settings however throws the exception, this is what is really confusing to me.
What I tried so far:
Change application pool setting to "enable 32-bit applications"
Build all DLLs with Any CPU, 64Bit or x86 target
Check the corflags of all DLLs
I can provide an export of the project to everybody willing to help me get this configuration running!
I really appreciate every bit of help!

I presume you tried with setting Target Platform (Build option in project properties)?
Also, take a look at this article:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/383138/BadImageFormatException-x86-i-x64

I got the same issue on my application. It was fixed after I perform the following:
* Granting permission for the "Anonymous" user in my web site folder.
* Changing the application pool from ".NET v4.5 Classic" to ".NET v4.5".

All I can offer is some help in determining what isn't loading. If it's a dev server it might be worthwhile to install the appropriate sdk to use the Fusion Log Viewer. If that isn't an option you can turn on assembly binding logging from the registry as follows:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion]
"LogFailures"=dword:00000001
"LogPath"="c:\\bindFailureLogs\\"
just be sure to turn it off when you're done, there is a performance penalty using the assembly bind logging. Make sure the folder exists before you enter the registry key and recycle the application pool of the application for the logging to start. This will provide you a detailed list of what dll (or dependency since it's not always readily apparent if it's a dependancy or the dll listed in the error message) didn't load and where it tried to load it from.
Your partitioning of the applications fixing the problem suggests that there are multiple dependencies on the assembly targeting different versions and since only a single version of an assembly can be loaded into an app domain some dependency isn't being satisfied. For managed assemblies you could use an assembly binding redirect, but I don't know what the unmanaged equivalent of that would be if it even exists.

Windows 8 App Store development - Library Reference Behaviour

I am new to Windows 8 App Store development and have bumped into something strange.
If I create a normal .net library (signed library) and attempt to add it to my Windows Store application, Visual Studio 2012 moans that I can't add this project. Both projects are in the same solution.
This project contains a reference to the System.Net assembly, as I use some of the types from there. I know that System.Net is not a fully supported namespace. TcpClient, NetworkStream, etc have all been removed. I also know that StreamSocket, DataReader and DataWriter in the Windows.Networking namespace is the alternative.
Before I loose you, let me get to the point. Instead of adding the compiled assembly from this project as a project reference to the Windows Store application, I browse for the compiled assembly on my hard drive and reference the assembly directly.
To my surprise, this worked! This leads me to the following questions:
Why? That doesn't make sense to me. Someone please explain.
Also, if I use this library, will the Windows Store reject my application? Answering the second question myself... Answer is YES! Windows Certification App, no longer recognises this as a Windows Store App if the mentioned library is referenced.

There are a couple ways to add an assembly reference to a project:
Add assembly reference to a project in same solution.
Browse for an assembly somewhere on your hard drive.
In Visual Studio 2012, if you add a non compliant WinRT assembly reference to a WinRT project, Visual Studio 2012 won't allow it.
However, if you add the same assembly to the WinRT project by browsing on your hard drive, the assembly is referenced successfully. This only works if the referenced assembly is signed with a strong key. I'm not sure if this is a flaw in the product or intentional.
Microsoft makes up for this flaw (if it infact is one) later on when passing your Windows Store App through certification. Certification fails because it recognises that an assembly has been referenced in the project which is not appropriate for a Windows App Store product.
So in summary, you can NOT reference WinRT assemblies in your WinRT projects. The drawback with doing this is that your app will fail Windows App Store validation. The advantage with this is if you are not developing a Windows App Store product, you can re-use work you've already done.

Sharing Entity Framework Library across multiple projects

We have an Entity Framework project with several models set up using .NET 4 and VS2010. Then we have several projects that need to use this entity project. We successfully compiled the EF project into a DLL. We have also successfully added the EF dll reference into multiple projects which is working great.
The problem is now that we have several programs (ASP.NET and console apps) that reference this EF dll and the dll is copied locally for each calling program, when we make a change to the EF dll, we then have to go into each and every project and replace the EF dll with the new build.
I've done a lot of searching for sharing libraries and even EF projects across multiple projects. While I have found several, I can't seem to find a good example that I can make work for my situation or that isn't so old that it's irrelevant.
That is the general issue I'm having. To give a better idea of the issues I'm encountering, I will focus on one particular project. This is an ASP.NET webform project for in intranet. If we add the EF dll reference and allow the project to copy the dll locally, the EF works fantastically. However, because we have multiple project we now need to try and centralize the EF dll somewhere where it can be shared by the multiple processes. I am not trying to set this up so that one EF dll is accessed across multiple server. I am happy to install a copy of the DLL on individual servers if necessary.
My desire is to create a "common libraries" directory on each server, simplified example "C:\OurLibraries". We would then put or EF dlls (and maybe others later) into this folder and allow the various programs/processes to access the common copy of the EF dll. I've made sure the "local copy" of the EF dll has been removed from the intranet project and added a reference to the "C:\OurLibraries\OurEF.dll" file. Everything builds fine and the intranet project works fine until it tries to display a page that has references the EF and then displays an error message:
"Could not load type 'EntityNS.ProductDBEntity'."
If I turn on "local copy" in the reference, the intranet site works fine again. I cannot seem to find that magic setting that will allow me to share the EF dll.
I have tried the following things based on various posts, but with no success:
Signing the assembly and adding to the GAC. Experienced the same issue as having it in "C:\OurLibraries"
Adding the "C:\OurLibraries" directory to the PATH environment variable.
Changed my connection string for the EF in my intranet web.config file to remove the "OR's" from the string:
/Ecomedate.csdl|res:///Ecomedate.ssdl|res:///Ecomedate.msl;provider=System...
to
;provider=System...
(based on this post: Sharing Entity framework objects across projects?)
I've spent many hours working on this and searching forums and posts. I know there has got to be a way to do this otherwise code reuse and DLL sharing seems useless, so any help you can suggest would be appreciated.
Here is are additional efforts that I have made and in response to some of the post so far.
Also here is what I have experienced with the GAC so far.
- on a computer with VS2010 installed, the gacutil is located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK... and from forum on questions "Where is the gacutil" the general tone is that gacutil is now considered a dev tool and not intended for use in prod environments. Gacutil is not part of the Server 2008 or .Net 4 framework, so there are several suggestions on how to deploy and deal with GAC dlls
first, the old way of installing, using the gacutil, but by using psexec to copy and call gacutil on the production server. I can get psexec to run the gacutil from a local dev box to a prod server and get a return code of 0, success, however I cannot find a way to actually view that it is installed on the production server, because there is not gacutil on prod server, I can't use someting like gacutil /l DataEntity.dll to view info on installed dll...if it even installed correctly.
I tried copying the gacutil.exe and gacutil.exe.config files to production server to try and run from there. While the program run and gives the version number of the gacutil, it doesn't respond to any command line switches such as gacutil.exe /i DataEntity.dll or gacutil.exe /l DataEntity. It just displays the gacutil version info again and stops.
Someone suggesed on a forum to installing the Microsoft SDK on the prod machine. While I might have to consider this due to lack of success so far, I really don't like the idea of installing an SDK on my production evironments.
I tried to find tools such as the Remote GAC Manager to view and manage, but the last development on that opensource project was 2008, so when I try to use it to veiw the GAC, it is wanting to show me c:\Windows\assembly gac dlls, but .NET 4 now uses C:\windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly to store GAC dlls, so I can's seem to find any way to view or maintain DLLs on the remote production server's gac. If I run a dir DataEntity.dll /s command at c:\windows in the command prompt, I find the dll embedded in the C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL directory, but if I try to look at the file through explorer in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL, I cannot see the dll, so I cannot find a tool that allows me to manage (install, list, uninstall) the DLLs in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL on the server 2008 production server.
There was a suggestion to install dlls into gac via drag and drop. I am trying to automate our deployment process, so having to manually drag and drop doesn't make a lot of sense. Does a copy to the C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL directory work too? I've tried it, but again since I cannot find a tool that will let me see the installed/registered DLLs I can't tell if it worked or not.
another suggestion was to create an installer that would just install into the GAC. I tried this method and ran into a couple of issues. First it was a very manual process. I could not figure out how to get it to uninstall the old dll from GAC and then install the new version of DLL in gac; it kept insisting that I uninstall the previous installation first. Second, when I tried to uninstall the dll, it kept saying that it was in use by another application. I tried restarting and then uninstalling it, but no go. I finally figured out it was IIS and had to shutdown IIS, uninstall, restart, install, and then restart IIS. This is a pain in the but to try and automate.
Seems like there should be a better way to deploy dlls to a production environment into a shared directory. I simply want to try and put the DataEntity.dll in a c:\MyLibraries directory and have the processes access that one copy of the DLL. Microsoft does it with the C:\Program Files\Common Files, so it should be possible, but I have now spent days trying to find a way that works that would considerabley reduce the maintenance efforts imposed by the GAC or installer options, reduce the number of duplicate dlls, and avoiding overlooking replacing dlls if allowed to 'copy locally'.

the best solution for your problem is using Web Services.web services are created for this purpose.You can build a WCF service library and then use it's methods in all of your projects.
Good Luck

The GAC approach is probably the closest one to what you are looking for. Since you were unable to get the GAC working, you should double check to makes sure you followed the instructions for installing in the GAC.

This may seem pretty "out-there" as a solution but we are considering using a Git Repository to do a remote publish to multiple servers, the Git repository would be committed with the latest DLL(and only the DLL), then pushed to each production server/application server.

Deploy a program that includes Microsoft.Smartdevice.Connectivity assembly

I am using Microsoft.Smartdevice.Connectivity assembly as a part of a larger application. Now I have to deploy that application and I can't find any info in regarding to deploying such applications. Even on the msdn resource page there is a question regarding this issue, with no replys.
So how can I deploy such an application. Is there a list of assemblys I have to deploy or something?
I have included the Misrosoft.Smartdevice.Connectivity.dll however the application is still missing at least one file: "Microsoft.VisualStudio.Connectivity.Interop.dll" I can't find that file anywhere. How can I deploy this application on a machine without visual studio installed.
How can I deploy the application on a computer without visual studio? Is there a SmartDevice Connectivity API redistributable or something?
Thank you for your help.

There is a tool called IsoStoreSpy.application. You can use it to deploy applications.
Good luck

This is a very old question but these libraries are in the NuGet package managerment framework which should allow you to include references. Set the project's build to copy all package-managed DLLs into the output directory of your executable.
http://www.nuget.org/packages/Smartdevice.Connectivity/

.net c# Winforms .exe wont start on any other machine

Ive developed a winforms application on my local machine using .net 4.0 and it runs fine. I have all dotnet versions installed.
When I copied the .exe and all of its references (the complete bin\debug and bin\release) to another machine it simply does not run. On one of my VMS it fires up visual studio express and asks if I want to connect a debgger. On other machines it just doesnt do anything.
But I can work out what on earth is going on.
I have referenced soem xceed dlls that are installed in GAC but not on the target machines GAC could this be the problem?
How do I tell what the hell is going on?
Pete

Yes, the xceed dlls (and every other referenced dlls) must exist on the target machine -- either included in the application directory or the GAC.
You may try specifying "Copy Local = true" to the suspect references, and rebuilding your project, so that these dlls are specifically included with the compiled assemblies.

if you deploy the pdb-files to the one VM with VS Express installed you should be able to connect the debugger and see the exception details. And yes, a missing assembly can (or better: will) cause that kind of behavior if the assembly is not only referenced but actually used in your application. I would generally recommend to implement some kind of error logging (either to the event logs or to a text file).

Have you checked that the other machine has a version of the .Net Framework installed? Failing that try to publish the application using the ClickOnce tool.
ClickOnce will download and instal any missing dependencies for the .Net Framework if necessary.