I am getting an error about the assembly "C:\Ora10g\bin\Zip.exe". The trouble is this solution does NOT use anything in Oracle at all. I could not find a single reference to 10g anywhere in the project. I inherited this from another person who left our group. He never had this issue. Another member of my team said he got this before but reinstalling the client portion of 10g fixed it. No such luck there. I even tried using WinGrep to search the entire solution folder for "Ora10g" but it wasn't there. Any ideas? I can't build this solution until I can figure out how to get rid of this false reference to Oracle. VS 2005 solution. Contains a couple WinForm apps, a couple class libraries, and a web service. The error occurs in the main class library project. Here is the error message: Error 1 The "ResolveAssemblyReference" task failed unexpectedly. System.BadImageFormatException: Could not load file or assembly 'C:\Ora10g\bin\Zip.exe' or one of its dependencies. The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest. File name: 'C:\Ora10g\bin\Zip.exe' at System.Reflection.AssemblyName.nGetFileInformation(String s) at System.Reflection.AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(String assemblyFile) at Microsoft.Build.Shared.AssemblyNameExtension.GetAssemblyNameEx(String path) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.SystemState.GetAssemblyName(String path) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Resolver.FileMatchesAssemblyName(AssemblyNameExtension assemblyName, Boolean isPrimaryProjectReference, Boolean wantSpecificVersion, Boolean allowMismatchBetweenFusionNameAndFileName, String pathToCandidateAssembly, ResolutionSearchLocation searchLocation) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Resolver.ResolveAsFile(String fullPath, AssemblyNameExtension assemblyName, Boolean isPrimaryProjectReference, Boolean wantSpecificVersion, Boolean allowMismatchBetweenFusionNameAndFileName, ArrayList assembliesConsideredAndRejected) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Resolver.ResolveFromDirectory(AssemblyNameExtension assemblyName, Boolean isPrimaryProjectReference, Boolean wantSpecificVersion, String[] executableExtensions, String directory, ArrayList assembliesConsideredAndRejected) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.AssemblyFoldersResolver.Resolve(AssemblyNameExtension assemblyName, String rawFileNameCandidate, Boolean isPrimaryProjectReference, Boolean wantSpecificVersion, String[] executableExtensions, String hintPath, String assemblyFolderKey, ArrayList assembliesConsideredAndRejected, String& foundPath, Boolean& userRequestedSpecificFile) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.AssemblyResolution.ResolveReference(IEnumerable`1 jaggedResolvers, AssemblyNameExtension assemblyName, String rawFileNameCandidate, Boolean isPrimaryProjectReference, Boolean wantSpecificVersion, String[] executableExtensions, String hintPath, String assemblyFolderKey, ArrayList assembliesConsideredAndRejected, String& resolvedSearchPath, Boolean& userRequestedSpecificFile) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ReferenceTable.ResolveReference(AssemblyNameExtension assemblyName, String rawFileNameCandidate, Reference reference) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ReferenceTable.ResolveAssemblyFilenames() at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ReferenceTable.ComputeClosure() at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ReferenceTable.ComputeClosure(DependentAssembly[] remappedAssembliesValue, ITaskItem[] referenceAssemblyFiles, ITaskItem[] referenceAssemblyNames, ArrayList exceptions) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ResolveAssemblyReference.Execute(FileExists fileExists, DirectoryExists directoryExists, GetDirectories getDirectories, GetAssemblyName getAssemblyName, GetAssemblyMetadata getAssemblyMetadata, GetRegistrySubKeyNames getRegistrySubKeyNames, GetRegistrySubKeyDefaultValue getRegistrySubKeyDefaultValue, GetLastWriteTime getLastWriteTime) at Microsoft.Build.Tasks.ResolveAssemblyReference.Execute() at Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine.TaskEngine.ExecuteTask(ExecutionMode howToExecuteTask, Hashtable projectItemsAvailableToTask, BuildPropertyGroup projectPropertiesAvailableToTask, Boolean& taskClassWasFound) WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF. To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1. Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging. To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].