Deploying .NET 4 Project – Error 1001 (System.BadImageFormatException)

After attending the UK Tech Days events last week in London, I was keen to jump on the Visual Studio 2010 and .net 4.0 bandwagon.

I converted some of our projects here at Crocus to the .net 4 framework (which was incredibly easy – nothing broke!)
I even took advantage of some of the quick to implement features in .net 4, and converted some of our massively over-ridden methods to use optional parameters.

One project in particular is a Windows Service, that sends out purchase orders on a schedule.
(I recently wrote about how this broke due to Quartz.net expecting a UTC start time)

This has a Visual Studio deployment project associated with it.

After building the newly upgraded .net 4 version of the project, and deploying the .msi file to our target server, I got the following error:

Error 1001 Exception occurred while initializing the installation. System.BadImageFormatException: Could not load file or assembly or one of its dependencies. This assembly is built by a runtime newer than the currently loaded runtime and cannot be loaded.

Now, I had definitely upgraded said server to .net 4 (twice, as a matter of fact – after the first time i received this error!)

After some Googling, some people were saying to change the platform target on my assemblies, which i did, to no avail.

I eventually discovered the problem.

You need to set the .NET Framework Launch Condition

Here’s how to do it:

Right click on your deployment project in solution explorer

Under “Version” Choose .NET Framework 4

After rebuilding and deploying my setup file, everything worked fine.

Kevin

Thanks. You saved me a few hours of headache!
Drew

Yeah, no kidding. The worst part is that it shows as an error when you open up the launch conditions, but the compiler doesn’t report an error.
http://www.e-evolution.net Gold Coast Software Development, Australia

Thanks for the information, I havea windows service that I have migrated from .NET 3.5 to .NET 4.0 and this was such an obscure error. I had triple checked the version on the server five times at least and was not lookig forward to spending the day troubleshooting this.

Thanks again
Mark
Kevin.Gu

Thanks very much!
flashenoise

Thanks for sharing, good article.

In addition, in same cases when you’re changing launch conditions, make sure that selected options in prerequisites (Setup Properties > Prerequisites) match against selected framework.
http://blog.jitbit.com/ jitbit

Thanks! You’ve ended my 2-days headache
- http://www.alexjamesbrown.com Alex
  
  No problem-
  That’s about how long i spent on this!
http://www.lowcarboneconomy.com Andre

you saved me a great deal of time, my service i made up of about 20 class projects all with their own references, going through them once was time consuming enough, let alone doingit again

many thanks !!!
Mike

Many thanks for this worked like a charm.
Steve

Many thanks, spent ages trying to figure this out before reading your solution.
http://eyasco.com Lake

Thanks – so glad you found the problem and published it for the rest of us.
Demetrios Vasiadis

WOW. Thanks for this post. Spent hours trying to figure out why this was happening. +1 for the simple fix.
mike

Thank you! This post is a nugget of gold. You save me a bunch of time trying to track this down
http://www.yourlifetools.com Patrick

You Da Man! Thanks!
paul smietan

Thank you – worked like a charm and you saved me a ton of time!
ehsan

my problem solved. thanks a lot.
but there is a question:
I create a sample project in .net4 and create a setup for it.
the .net version in launch condition was .net 4 by default.
but this error occurred!!! why?
S

Thanks!!!
Shawn

I did what you said to try but I’m still having the same issue. Do you have any other suggestions?
Fernando

Thanks to publish this, works for me.
Abbie

Absolutely brilliant. Thank you.
Atiya

Well done! it worked for me too
Yassir

Thanks. That’s how posts should be, straight to the point.
PeterJ

After trying a few other people’s suggestions this was the one that worked.
Many thanks!
ShivaA

This is very useful.
MikeJ

It’s July 2012 and your post is still saving people (me) headaches. Thanks great post!
Mysterious

Thanks a Zillion….
Jim

Any reason why? All my projects are built against the .NET Framework 4 Client Profile. Why should the installer need the full .NET Framework 4?

Actually, it didn’t work for me. I still see the same error when I try to install it.
John

Thank you for posting! Saved me loads of time.
opherko

Thanks for this post, it was just what I needed after converting an old app to 4.0 and not knowing what the deal was. Since there are multiple referenced assemblies I had incorrectly assumed it was a cross between target platforms in the assemblies, but not so.

Preesh!
max

Perfect!
savari

Thank you Sooooooooooooooooo much…
Mauri

CAPO!!!

Alex James Brown

ASP.net MVC, C#, NodeJS developer from Camberley, Surrey