Friday, January 9, 2009

Global Assembly Cache (GAC) folder suddenly appears empty? Technical problem solved!

A few days ago I was working with Visual Studio and suddenly I was "under attack", a technical problem so persistent that I had to find an immediate solution.

What happened? Suddenly, the Assembly folder (AKA "GAC folder" located at C:\WINDOWS\assembly) appeared empty. In addition, I could not deploy or run any of my web parts.

I restarted my virtual machine, hoping that the assembly folder contents would miraculously reappear after rebooting. That did the trick but it turned out to be a very temporary solution. As I continued working this problem intensified, occurring and greater and greater frequency.
Eventually it happened at intervals of about 10 minutes and it became impossible to continue.

Searching for a more long-lasting solution I came across a forum where many other developers complained about the same problem.

The suggestion I found there was to disable the Indexing Service (located in Start -> Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Services).

I tried this and thankfully it worked! All I had to do is to stop the service in the “services” screen.



Thing is – this service has a knack for “magically” restarting itself every now and then, so if you want to make sure you've gotten rid of it for good – I suggest also changing its start-up type to “Disabled”.



Since I implemented these changes on my computer everything has returned to normal and I've been able to work in Visual Studio freely and easily.

Hope this helps,
Shai Petel
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13 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 24, 2009 at 12:11 PM

    Great. It worked, Very useful info

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 12, 2009 at 6:03 AM

    oh god, you are a life saver !!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. B1juMay 12, 2009 at 10:02 PM

    Very useful piece of information

    -biju

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  4. AnonymousJune 18, 2009 at 4:33 PM

    awesome! I'm put up with the disappearing act of the GAC for far to long. Seems to only happen when its SP development and inside a VPC. So strange!

    Fix worked perfectly!

    ReplyDelete
  5. PrasadMay 3, 2010 at 5:05 AM

    Very thnx , awesome!!!
    this tip saved my day.

    ReplyDelete
  6. PrasadMay 3, 2010 at 5:06 AM

    Very thanks
    this tip saved my dsay!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Pranav ShahAugust 22, 2012 at 5:03 AM

    My Indexing service is already disabled, but i'm still facing the same problem. Help! :(

    ReplyDelete
  8. Pranav ShahAugust 22, 2012 at 5:04 AM

    My Indexing Service is already disabled, but i'm still in the midst of the same problem. Help!!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Shai PetelAugust 28, 2012 at 10:20 AM

    Restart helped?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Pranav ShahAugust 28, 2012 at 6:20 PM

    Nope :(

    ReplyDelete
  11. Pranav ShahMay 28, 2013 at 9:56 PM

    Restart helps sometimes, but is there any firm solution to this? Or at least do we know why it occurs?

    Please advice. I'm still facing this. :(

    ReplyDelete
  12. Pranav ShahMay 28, 2013 at 9:56 PM

    Restart helps sometimes, but is there any firm solution to this? Or at least do we know why it occurs?

    Please advice. I'm still facing this. :(

    ReplyDelete
  13. Shai PetelJune 4, 2013 at 5:52 AM

    I think after a windows update this problem stopped happening to me.

    Make sure you update windows and visual studio components. I know developers don't like to run windows update but it is important and can save a lot of headache.

    ReplyDelete