E.2 Managing the Global Assembly Cache

There are two ways to work with the assembly cache. One is with the Windows Explorer, which has a shell extension that displays the cache and allows you to manipulate the entries. If you explore the %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly directory, you can display the current cache:

start %SYSTEMROOT%\assembly

Alternatively you can use the gacutil utility, which allows you to install, uninstall, and list the contents of the global assembly cache. The following:

gacutil /i e.dll

installs e.dll.

This example:

gacutil /u e

uninstalls all assemblies with the name e.

This example:

gacutil /u e,ver=0.0.0.0

uninstalls only the assemblye that matches the version number.