Assembly Binding Log Viewer (fuslogvw) not logging any bindings

Question

Assembly Binding Log Viewer (fuslogvw) is not logging bindings for any version of the framework installed on my machine.

I tried using a custom log location, the default log location, the default category, and the native images category.

Assembly Binding Log Viewer worked a few months ago. I'm on a 64-bit machine and am running: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\x64\FUSLOGVW.exe

Answer 1

Going into Internet Explorer --> Tools --> Internet Options --> Browsing History,Delete..., , checking Temporary Internet Files and clicking delete fixed my issue.

Thanks to this blog post: http://www.request-response.com/blog/CommentView,guid,9f383687-3e1e-4568-833b-ef80e0938337.aspx

• marknuzz: Okay, so the obvious elephant in the room here is that if I uninstalled Internet Explorer then I can't use this?
• David Silva Smith: @Nuzzolilo There should be a way to reduce the number of temporary internet files on your system. Maybe try this? windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/… I don't use Windows much anymore.
• marknuzz: Thanks I was able to find the options despite having it uninstalled
• user3638471: Note that MSDN states that the IE cache is only used when not using a custom log location.

Answer 2

After much frustration I have found that by default, fuslogvw does not log assembly binding failures!

You need to click 'settings' then select "log bind failures to disk", otherwise you won't see anything in the window.

To change the settings, you may have to run fuslogw.exe as administrator.

• redcurry: I needed to browse to the right directory because in the command-prompt it used fuslogvw in the directory v10.0A. The one I needed was in the directory v7.0A.
• altumano: Also need to click Refresh to see stuff
• James P. Wright: @redcurry it took me about 20 google searches to finally find your response about v7.0A, and that was the answer to my problem of getting it to run for an MVC site running through my local IIS. THANK YOU!
• Waescher: I posted an answer pointing to a tool called Fusion++. I just thought to mention it here to make it visible to you.
• Tony_Henrich: The developer(s) of fuslogvw know very little about a good user experience!

Answer 3

If you're building an ASP.NET MVC application (or possibly any other application involving IIS) restarting IIS was required to start getting binding logs.

• Dave: Similar with Cassini (Visual studio temp webserver). need to stop it and it will restart once you relaunch project

Answer 4

The Assembly Binding Log Viewer (FUSLOGVW.exe) has quite some glitches.

Like the fact that it does not bind errors by default when running or that you have to make sure to not add an additional backslash to a custom log path. You cannot use the UI to go on error hunt you literally have to scan the file system to read logs. Heck, you cannot even resize the app window.

There's so much wrong with it that I decided to write an alternative assembly binding log viewer named Fusion++ and put it on GitHub. It uses the same mechanics internally but parses the logs for you. You don't have to care for any settings at all, not even log paths 😉

You can get the latest release from here or via chocolatey (choco install fusionplusplus).

Fusion++

• David Silva Smith: Thanks for that! Wow, Reading through this post and answer, what a painful app! Unreal, doing something in IE impacts a completely unrelated dev tool! Thank you for making something better! P.S. I love dark mode! Thank you!
• Waescher: Thanks David. Glad you like it.
• bart: @Waescher where has this app been all my life? Thanks! :-)
• Mike Loux: Oh my god. This is going to be such a time saver. Immediately shared this with my entire team. That being said, my problem was that I needed to reset IIS. But still...
• track0: Outstanding piece of work! The tool initially wasn't capturing anything but started to do so after an iisreset. (And the actual culprit turned out to an old version of the DDL cached within the "Temporary ASP.NET Files" folder.)

Answer 5

According to this post it uses the IE Cache for logging. So it is a better idea to avoid clearing the browsing history all together and click on Settings->Enable Custom Log Path and choose a directory where you won't be sharing with IE.

• stonedauwg: This didn't work for me, even with a custom fold set I STILL had to clear the IE temp files/history

Answer 6

I use the script from this blog post to enable fuslogvw.exe's logging, without the need to use the exe itself.

The script can be downloaded here.

This script "enables" and "disables" custom settings for the Fusion Log Viewer tool.

Enabling settings will:

• Create a log folder (default: C:\fusionlogs)
• Add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion\LogPath and set it to the log folder
• Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWAR\Microsoft\Fusion\LogFailures to 1
• Optionally set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion\ForceLog to 1
• Optionally set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion\LogResourceBinds to 1

Disabling settings will:

• Delete the log folder and its contents
• Delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion\LogPath
• Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion\LogFailures to 0
• Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion\ForceLog to 0
• Set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion\LogResourceBinds to 0

• Eriawan Kusumawardhono: This answer is the most correct. Deleting IE cache in the marked answer, does not guarantee that Fusion will display logged assemblies.
• Markus: script is no longer available