Can Windows find unmanaged DLLs not in the path, GAC or Registry?

Question

Can Windows find the unmanaged (non-COM) DLLs of a mixed-mode application if these DLLs are not in the application directory or Windows path? I noticed VS 2008 does not appear on the path, and I was wondering how this is done.

Answer 1

No, it can't "find" them in the sense of searching a set of paths. But they can always be loaded by their full path (C:\Program Files\Visual Studio...) if you know where to look. You can use AppDomain to get your own executable's path, and then derive the location of your DLLs from there.

Is that what you were looking for? Your question is a bit ambiguous.