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5798

answers:

3

I wrote a dll in VS 2005 that will be loaded by another program that was developed in VS 2003. When that program tries to load my dll, it throws a System.BadImageFormatException: The format of the file 'Foo.dll' is invalid.

I searched SO and Google, and it seems that the different version of .NET is the culprit. My question is: How do I fix this?

(I cannot modify the program developed in VS 2003.)

+6  A: 

I got this error when I was running the 64bit version of the CLR and trying to load an assembly that was marked 32bit only. The specific assembly in my case was the Oracle.DataAccess.dll that comes as part of ODP.NET.

John Downey
I am getting the same error too (with a different assembly), do you have any solution for that?
Marek
You need to just make sure you run the 32bit CLR when loading 32bit only assemblies
John Downey
This was the answer to my problem. I had not faced this in quite a while, but when one is using COM interop it's fairly common to run into this scenario when using the 'Any CPU' build config and then deploying to a 64-bit server. The x86 configs are handy in those cases.
EnocNRoll
+2  A: 

Compile the VS2005 Project with the same .Net Version as your VS2003 Project uses. Or, depending of the size of your VS2003 Project, reflector and rewrite it. That's common practice for projects over here, where for some obscure reason there is no more VSS version available.

Markus Nigbur
"Compile the VS2005 Project with the same .Net Version as your VS2003 Project uses." Can you please explain how to do that? I don't see how to choose the .NET version of my project.
joshdick
Rightclick your Project in VS, on the very first tab you can select the targetframework.
Markus Nigbur
Thank you, Markus. Although that didn't work in VS 2005, it did work in the 2008 version. I appreciate your help.
joshdick
+1  A: 

SOLUTION: If you are on IIS7, Right Click/ Advanced Settings on the Specific Application Pool of the website and select True on Enable 32-Bit Applications. It should work.

kalyan