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500

answers:

2

Has anyone else had issues using Redgate's .NET Reflector on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit? I'm getting an error saying:

"Unable to find a version of the runtime to run this application."

  1. Any ideas what's going on with this?
  2. Anyone have alternative recommendations for a .NET object browser? I'm thinking lightweight tools, not like Visual Studio.

Thanks, Trevor Sullivan

+1  A: 

That's fairly odd. I run reflector.exe on a number of Windows 7, both 32 and 64 bit, machines and I don't see any issues.

Did you copy this installation from another machine vs. fresh install? If so it's possible that there is a issue in the .config file preventing you from running reflector. Try deleting the reflector.exe.config file (and all other files related to reflector other than the .exe) and see if that fixes the issue.

JaredPar
Huh, so I deleted the config file, which didn't have any effect, but then I decided to copy the Reflector executable out of System32, and into my Downloads profile folder. For whatever reason, Reflector will execute out of the Downloads folder, but not from System32. I put it in System32, because it's already in the PATH environment variable, and therefore easy to execute at the run prompt.Anyway, all's good now :) Thanks for your help.Cheers,Trevor Sullivan
Trevor Sullivan
+3  A: 

Windows 7 comes with .NET 3.5 SP1 pre-installed. One possible source of the problem is having Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 installed before you did the Win7 upgrade. The upgrade will destroy the .NET 4.0 configuration, all programs that use the default version of the CLR will no longer work correctly. I found a workaround for it but I strongly recommend you reinstall Win7, now selecting a clean install rather than an upgrade.


Strike that. The info we were missing is that you copied it into the system32 folder. That folder is virtualized in a 64-bit version of Windows. A 32-bit app will see the syswow64 folder instead. That is an issue with Reflector, it has config flags (visible with corflags.exe) that forces it to run in 32-bit mode. Accordingly, it can't find its .exe.config file.

Hans Passant
I have never installed any versions of Visual Studio on here, and I'm still running the .NET 3.5 SP1 framework that comes with Windows 7. This is a fresh build as of about 2 weeks ago.Thanks for the input.Cheers,Trevor Sullivan
Trevor Sullivan
I updated my answer with the explanation.
Hans Passant