Where can I find location of generated file after doing Ngen?

Question

I did Ngen on a C# executable. It was succesful, but I cannot figure out where the generated file is in my PC. MSDN says it should be in native image cache, still not able t

Answer 1

Just exploring some similar issues here and you can navigate the GAC in explorer if you make a change in the registry.

Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Fusion create a DWORD entry named DisableCacheViewer, and set it to 1.

After that, open a new explorer window and navigate to e.g. c:\windows\assembly.

Answer 2

The exact location will vary by version but it will be something similar to this:

C:\Windows\assembly\NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32\System.Web\ace3bede2f516f9e5bca620ad86cc063>System.Web.ni.dll

They start in C:\Windows\assembly and then there is a subfolder NativeImages_vXXX for each .NET version. Then there is a subfolder for each dll that has a native image. Under that another subfolder for a unique version identifier (so you can have multiple native images from different versions of the same dll). Finally the native dll itself.

Note that you cannot navigate to this directory in Windows Exlporer. Use cmd. In Explorer there is a shell extension that hides the details of how the GAC and native images work and just shows you a prettier UI.

Answer 3

Try ngen display AssemblyName /verbose | findstr "File:"

ex: %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\ngen.exe display System.Xaml /verbose | findstr "File:"

Answer 4

Well, you see it took a long long time to find where the location is!

Well, it is inside c:\Windows\assembly folder, but when I opened this folder then I was only be able to see the .NET assemblies, so I thought there will be some hidden folders. So I open the command prompt with administrative privileges then I was able to see list of folders as shown below...

GAC,  GAC_32,  GAC_64,  GAC_MSIL,  NativeImages_v2.0.50727_32
NativeImages_v2.0.50727_64,  NativeImages_v4.0.30319_32,
NativeImages_v4.0.30319_64

You see it's amazing. I mean, here I can only see the required folders, but not the assemblies. Well, no problem, be happy.

So my application was built in v4 and 64-bit compilation so therefore my required EXE file was in the root of the NativeImages_v4.0.30319_64 folder.

Answer 5

You'll find them in the NativeImages_blabla folder in c:\windows\assembly. Also I've noted that .NET 3.5 and above actually does not allow physically accessing the NGENed image. I guess it reverted to using one large database for all files but I cant be sure since the generated images are no where to be seen on the disk.