The located assembly's manifest definition doe

Question

I am trying to run some unit tests in a C# Windows Forms application (Visual Studio 2005), and I get the following error:

System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'Utility, Version=1.2.0.200, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=764d581291d764f7' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)**

at x.Foo.FooGO()

at x.Foo.Foo2(String groupName_) in Foo.cs:line 123

at x.Foo.UnitTests.FooTests.TestFoo() in FooTests.cs:line 98**

System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'Utility, Version=1.2.0.203, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=764d581291d764f7' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)

I look in my references, and I only have a reference to Utility version 1.2.0.203 (the other one is old).

Any suggestions on how I figure out what is trying to reference this old version of this DLL file?

Besides, I don't think I even have this old assembly on my hard drive. Is there any tool to search for this old versioned assembly?

Answer 1

If you are using Visual Studio, try "clean solution" and then rebuild your project.

Answer 2

I just ran across this issue and the problem was I had an old copy of the .dll in my application debug directory. You might want to also check there (instead of the GAC) to see if you see it.

Answer 3

I added a NuGet package, only to realize a black-box portion of my application was referencing an older version of the library.

I removed the package and referenced the older version's static DLL file, but the web.config file was never updated from:

<dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.5.0.0" newVersion="6.0.0.0" />
</dependentAssembly>

to what it should have reverted to when I uninstalled the package:

<dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity name="Newtonsoft.Json" publicKeyToken="30ad4fe6b2a6aeed" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="0.0.0.0-4.0.0.0" newVersion="4.5.0.0" />
</dependentAssembly>

Answer 4

If you ever get an error like "The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference" and if you have updated via Project > Manage NuGet Packages and Update tab in VS, the first thing you could do is try installing another version of the package after checking versions from NuGet Gallery page and running the folowing command from Package Manager Console:

PM> Install-Package YourPackageName -Version YourVersionNumber 
//Example
PM> Install-Package Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders.Physical -Version 2.1.0

Although answer is not directly related to the package in question and it was asked way back, it is kind of generic, still relevant and hope it helps someone.

Answer 5

The other answers wouldn't work for me. If you don't care about the version and you just want your app to run then right click on the reference and set 'specific version' to false...This worked for me.

Answer 6

Just deleting contents of your project's bin folder and rebuild the solution solved my problem.