Unable to uninstall assemblies from the global assembly cache...

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Bill_ND - 29 Jul 2003 19:10 GMT

I have encountered a situation where I am unable to remove
a .NET assembly from the GAC. The message I receive
is "Assembly 'assemblyname' could not be uninstalled
because it is required by other applications." Although I
have seen this before when trying to remove .NET
assemblies that have been installed via an MSI package, I
now get this message while trying to remove any assembly
I've added to the GAC. Using gacutil does not work
either, and I have tried reformatting the machine to no
avail. Yes, amazingly a fresh install of everything
produced the same problem. Has
anyone else seen this and been able to correct it?

Is this related to trying to run multiple versions of the .NET framework on the same machine?

Here is example error message:
D:\gacutil /u ndirect.config

Unable to uninstall: assembly is required by one or more applications
Pending references:
Scheme: <WINDOWS_INSTALLER> ID: <MSI> DESCRIPTION: <Windows Installer>

Interesting thing with the message above, the assembly referenced here was never installed through MSI.

Bill_ND

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Jian-Shen Lin[MS] - 01 Aug 2003 08:01 GMT

That means the assembly is installed by a msi package.you can try to remove
this assembly anyway, use the /uf switch on gacutil

Ideally, . this case you need uninstall the assembly using the msi
package. Gacutil.exe does not let you uninstall assemblies that have been
installed and refcounted by Windows Installer.

Thanks

Jian Shen

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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Bill C - 01 Aug 2003 18:40 GMT

The assemblies I've added to the GAC are not installed with an msi package.

They were added using the following from command prompt: gacutil /i
<assemblyname>.

Now they are not removable from the GAC. This is a specific example of
assemblies that have nothing to do with MSI. So my question is how can we
remove these "orphaned" assemblies? There were 4-5 posts on this that I
noticed with no real solution so far to this particular scenario.

billc.
ndnet

> That means the assembly is installed by a msi package.you can try to remove
> this assembly anyway, use the /uf switch on gacutil
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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Bill C - 01 Aug 2003 19:09 GMT

Also, gacutil /uf does not release the assembly. It refuses to be removed
and gives the same error message.

Trying to remove the assembly through Windows Explorer view also does not
allow it to be deleted from the GAC.

bill c
ndnet

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Unable to uninstall assemblies from the global assembly cache...

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