PowerShell Tip: You may not need to load the DLL for that Assembly that can't be found

Jan 7, 2016 · 1 min read ·

Share on:

Recently, I wanted to access the System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost type, which uses the System.Windows.Forms.Integration namespace.

When I tried to load that namespace, PowerShell complained that The assembly 'System.Windows.Forms.Integration' could not be found.

I read up and found that the WindowsFormsIntegration.dll would need to be loaded, and I begrudgingly added this to my script:

1# This needs to be manual for some reason
2$netpath = [System.Reflection.Assembly]::GetExecutingAssembly().ImageRuntimeVersion
3$wpforms = "$env:SystemRootMicrosoft.NETFramework$netpathWPFWindowsFormsIntegration.dll"
4[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($wpforms) | Out-Null

It's ugly though, and I wondered if there was another way. Then I thought maybe I can just add the base name of the DLL file, and sure enough, this works!

1Add-Type -AssemblyName WindowsFormsIntegration

So the next time that you see an assembly can't be found can be loaded by using the DLL, try just the DLL name instead!