VS 2017 Metadata file '.dll could not be found

Svenmarim picture Svenmarim · May 30, 2017 · Viewed 122.3k times · Source

I know there is another question with exact the same problem, but I went trough all those answers, and none helped me. :( (This was the question.)

I just created a new ASP.NET MVC project and joined a few '.dll's in the solution. Now when I try to build the project I get the error message shown below on 3 of the 5 libraries.

Error   CS0006  Metadata file 'C:\Users\...\source\Database\bin\Debug\DataAccessLayer.dll' could not be found   Logic   C:\Users\...\source\Logic\CSC   1   Active

Error   CS0006  Metadata file 'C:\Users\...\source\Logic\bin\Debug\Logic.dll' could not be found    PTS2-MVC    C:\Users\...\source\PTS2-MVC\CSC    1   Active

Error   CS0006  Metadata file 'C:\Users\...\source\PTS2-MVC\bin\PTS2-MVC.dll' could not be found    PTS2-MVC.Tests  C:\Users\...\source\PTS2-MVC.Tests\CSC  1   Active

When I go to the bin\debug folder of that .dll, I see that it is empty, and the other .dll where I do not get an error message, is not empty. But I am clueless how to fix this or what I did to make this happen.

The most common answer is to go to the properties of the solution and go to configuration and uncheck -> apply -> check and apply again, but that didn't work

Answer

Svenmarim picture Svenmarim · May 30, 2017

The problem was that I had some other normal error messages in my project, and apparently after I fixed those and when I cleaned and built my project AGAIN, then all .dlls succeeded.

Make sure you don't have any other error messages in your project and if you do, fix those first!