Why can't EWL Development Utility find Microsoft.Web.Administration assembly?

Question

Here is the error:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Web.Administration, Version=7.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

The machine that gets this error has Microsoft.Web.Administration version 7.9.0.0 installed, but not version 7.0.0.0. The reference to this assembly from EWL is to version 7.0.0.0 but has Specific Version = False.

Could this be an IIS Express issue? I know that EWL has never been tested with IIS Express.

The machine is running Windows XP.

Answer 1

"Specific Version" in Visual Studio is only used at build-time, not run-time, which explains why version 7.9.0.0 of the assembly was not automatically loaded. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/1232955/35349.

Version 7.0.0.0 of Microsoft.Web.Administration was not present on the machine because it's running Windows XP, which doesn't include, or even support, IIS 7.

Answer 2

In my case I was not able to find the Microsoft.Web.Administration in the GAC while I was writing a console app. Environment: Windows 8, IIS 8, x64.

I browsed to iis folder i.e. "C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv" and found it.