Could not load file or assembly ‘System.Web.Silverlight’

Question

I really need some help with this as I have been trying to fix this for months and I can't figure it out.

I run an online chess site written in Silverlight 3.0

The architecture is Silverlight Client connecting to a WCF service that reads and writes data to a SQL Server database. It is hosted on Godaddy,

Once every so often I get the following error:

Could not load file or assembly ‘System.Web.Silverlight’ or one of its dependencies.

The system cannot find the path specified.

If I leave it alone it will fix itself after a few hours, however usually I just make a new publish of my application and it goes away. Also all the pages in the solution get this message not just the Silverlight application. So I have an aspx page with top ranks that does not use Silverlight but is in the same solution it also gets the same error. Its almost like the whole site dies.

This does not seem like a huge issue but it makes going on vacation hard since my site can go down at any time I am away. Also this seems to happen the most when I am sleeping so I often don't get to fixing it until I have already lost hours of potential logins.

Answer 1

This sounds like a ASP.NET problem. I suspect you are using ASP.NET with the Silverlight 2.0 ASP.NET server control. Ditch it and code the Object tag yourself, that way you no longer need that special assembly in your web site.

Answer 2

I received an answer on the Silverlight.net forums, it is a cobination of two items:

1. Like Anthony Suggested use an Object Tag to embed your Silverlight control.
2. Remove all refferences of System.Web.Silverlight from all your projects and never use it again.