How to enable assembly bind failure logging (Fusion) in .NET

A good place to start your investigation into any failed binding is to use the "fuslogvw.exe" utility. This may give you the information you need related to the binding failure so that you don't have to go messing around with any registry values to turn binding logging on.

The utility should be in your Microsoft SDKs folder, which would be something like this, depending on your operating system: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\FUSLOGVW.exe"

1) Run this utility (it has a GUI) and set the settings to "Log bind failures to disk".

2) Click "Delete all" to clear the list of any previous bind failures

3) Reproduce the binding failure in your application

4) In the utility, click Refresh. You should then see the bind failure logged in the list.

5) You can view information about the bind failure by selecting it in the list and clicking "View Log"

The first thing I look for is the path in which the application is looking for the assembly. You should also make sure the version number of the assembly in question is what you expect.