How to: Uninstall an Assembly from the GAC (using gactuil)

How to uninstall an assembly (DLL) from the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) using gacutil

As a developer in general you’ll find yourself surrounded by version control issues from time to time. Say for example, you are working with a particular library during development and a new version comes out. Sometimes the problems you face using the correct version of the library can be resolved by removing the previous versions from the Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Many other reasons exist for wanting to do this. Perhaps you are coding this as part of an installer for your application. Any way, it is always good knowledge to have around.

In order to remove or uninstall a library / DLL / Assembly from the GAC simply run the following at the command prompt:

gacutil /u <fully qualifiedassembly name>

Don’t forget you are going to need to run it using elevated credentials (Run as Administrator)

If you need more help or to see more options simply type:

gacutil /?

That command will launch the onscreen help for gacutil

Related articles

• How to Register a DLL(tech-faq.com)

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• Taking backup of an assembly from GAC folder(softwareashok.wordpress.com)

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