Force x86 CLR on 'Any CPU' .NET assembly

Posted by jeffora on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by jeffora
Published on 2009-10-02T00:56:00Z Indexed on 2010/03/15 20:09 UTC
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c#

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64bit

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injection

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clr

In .NET, the 'Platform Target: Any CPU' compiler option allows a .NET assembly to run as 64bit on a x64 machine, and 32bit on an x86 machine. It is also possible to force an assembly to run as x86 on an x64 machine using the 'Platform Target: x86' compiler option.

Is it possible to run an assembly with the 'Any CPU' flag, but determine whether it should be run in the x86 or x64 CLR? Normally this decision is made by the CLR/OS Loader (as is my understanding) based on the bitness of the underlying system.

I am trying to write a C# .NET application that can interact with (read: inject code into) other running processes. x64 processes can only inject into other x64 processes, and the same with x86. Ideally, I would like to take advantage of JIT compilation and the Any CPU option to allow a single application to be used to inject into either x64 or x86 processes (on an x64 machine).

The idea is that the application would be compiled as Any CPU. On an x64 machine it would run as x64. If the target process is x86, it should relaunch itself, forcing the CLR to run it as x86. Is this possible?

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