Error Could not load file or assembly 'Interop.ActiveDs'

Question

I'm doing some active directory work with c# and I'm getting this error on my page

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Interop.ActiveDs, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=46db4b78e98e1c9d' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

It's having some issue with the ActiveDS reference that was added I'm on a 64-bit machine and the server it runs on is also x64

I added the ActiveDS reference so I could do something like this

newRoleGroup.Properties["groupType"].Value = ActiveDs.ADS_GROUP_TYPE_ENUM.ADS_GROUP_TYPE_UNIVERSAL_GROUP;

So my question is, why can't it load the ActiveDs reference?

Solution 1

You'd be far better off not taking the reference to the COM library and instead just declaring the proper constants in your code e.g.:

enum  ADS_GROUP_TYPE_ENUM {
  public long ADS_GROUP_TYPE_GLOBAL_GROUP = 0x00000002,
  public long ADS_GROUP_TYPE_DOMAIN_LOCAL_GROUP   = 0x00000004,
  public long ADS_GROUP_TYPE_LOCAL_GROUP          = 0x00000004,
  public long ADS_GROUP_TYPE_UNIVERSAL_GROUP      = 0x00000008,
  public long ADS_GROUP_TYPE_SECURITY_ENABLED     = 0x80000000
}

Solution 2

Try this:

1) Copy the C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ActiveDs.dll and its respective ActiveDs.tlb file to a folder within your solution; call it an External Reference folder

2) Remove the reference to ActiveDs in your project

3) Add a new reference, but this time instead of picking the COM version, pick the TLB instead. Visual Studio will create the Intero wrapper for you.