Assembly Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll does not load

Question

When trying to load Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll from any project, it throws a FileNotFoundException. The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E), with no innerException.

Even the simple code like the following throws that exception:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
 Assembly.LoadFile(@"C:\Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll");
}

I run XP x64, but I've set the platform in the configuration manager to x86, because I know it shouldn't(doesn't) work on x64 or Any CPU. I've manually added the dll file to GAC, but that didn't solve the problem. I have also tried the M$ Assembly Binding Log Viewer to see if those logs had any useful information, but they didn't. Everything, the loading etc, was a success according to them.

Any suggestions? please?

Answer 1

Is this on your development machine, or on another machine that you're trying to get the game to run?

The obvious questions are, did you install the latest version of XNA Game Studio? if so, what version of visual studio are you using? did you try to reinstall?

If this is on an end user's machine, did you install the XNA Framework Redistributable?

Answer 2

Thank you for the response.

For my purposes version 1.1 suffices, but I should have mentioned that I've reinstalled quite a bit: I've tried the following versions of the framework: 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 and I have combined them with the matching XNA Game studio versions and I've tried some non-matching combinations, but all threw the same exception. And yes, it concerns the XNA Redistributable for the end user's machine.