Could not find ildasm.exe at location C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft visual studio 11.0

Question

How does the Developer command prompt for Visual studio 2012 search the location of ildasm.exe. Running command window Developer command prompt for Visual studio

Answer 1

When you start Developer command prompt for Visual studio 2012 the command (it is a bat script) modifies environment PATH (and other things that does not matter in this case).

You can see the difference when you type set in Developer command prompt for Visual studio 2012 and in classic cmd.

When you open Developer command prompt for Visual studio 2012 it is true that you land in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft visual studio 11.0 but thanks to the modified PATH variable windows will look in every directory mentioned by this variable.

It will find ildasm.exe in i.e. c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.0A\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\.

Answer 2

please check following section. I am using VS 2013 & 2015.

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.0A\bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v8.1A\bin\NETFX 4.5.1 Tools
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6 Tools
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.6.1 Tools
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.7.1 Tools

If you want to use them from Visual Studio Directly. You can try following URL

Launch ildasm tool from inside visual studio itself how

Answer 3

There are various developer command prompts for different targets, each starts a batch file that modifies the PATH and some other things so that various developer programs can work.

Note that each command window started by these batch files starts with the PATH specified via the user and system environment settings. The batch files then modify the PATH etc within just that command window. Starting a new command window will not get the settings from the batch file as it does not modify the user and system environment settings.

If you really want easy access to ildasm.exe frequently from a command window you can modify the user environment settings. On Windows 7 you can access these settings via the properties of the computer where you select "advanced system settings" and then "environment variables".