How to resolve this System.IO.FileNotFoundException

Question

• The error only happens in production (not in debugging).
• The error only happens on the first application run after Windows login.
• The error occurs w

Answer 1

I hate to point out the obvious, but System.IO.FileNotFoundException means the program did not find the file you specified. So what you need to do is check what file your code is looking for in production.

To see what file your program is looking for in production (look at the FileName property of the exception), try these techniques:

• write to a debug log,
• use Visual Studio Attach to Process, or
• use Visual Studio Remote Debugging

Then look at the file system on the machine and see if the file exists. Most likely the case is that it doesn't exist.

Answer 2

I came across a similar situation after publishing a ClickOnce application, and one of my colleagues on a different domain reported that it fails to launch.

To find out what was going on, I added a try catch statement inside the MainWindow method as @BradleyDotNET mentioned in one comment on the original post, and then published again.

public MainWindow()
{
    try
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }
    catch (Exception exc)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(exc.ToString());
    }
}

Then my colleague reported to me the exception detail, and it was a missing reference of a third party framework dll file.

Added the reference and problem solved.

Answer 3

I've been mislead by this error more than once. After spending hours googling, updating nuget packages, version checking, then after sitting with a completely updated solution I re-realize a perfectly valid, simpler reason for the error.

If in a threaded enthronement (UI Dispatcher.Invoke for example), System.IO.FileNotFoundException is thrown if the thread manager dll (file) fails to return. So if your main UI thread A, calls the system thread manager dll B, and B calls your thread code C, but C throws for some unrelated reason (such as null Reference as in my case), then C does not return, B does not return, and A only blames B with FileNotFoundException for being lost...

Before going down the dll version path... Check closer to home and verify your thread code is not throwing.

Answer 4

Check all the references carefully

• Version remains same on target machine and local machine
• If assembly is referenced from GAC, ensure that proper version is loaded

For me cleaning entire solution by deleting manually, updating (removing and adding) references again with version in sync with target machine and then building with with Copy Local > False for GAC assemblies solves the problem.