Activator.CreateInstance problem
Posted by Sebastien Lachance on January 17, 2008
There is thing you know you should do, but with too much confidence, you will forget. This was the case this morning with the Activator.CreateInstance method.
I was getting this error :
Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOn
ly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandle& ctor, Boolean& b
NeedSecurityCheck)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean fillCach
e)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipVisi
bilityChecks, Boolean fillCache)
at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, Boolean nonPublic)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceImpl(BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder bin
der, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)
at System.Activator.CreateInstance(Type type, BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binde
r binder, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes)
at System.Activator.CreateInstance(String assemblyName, String typeName, Bool
ean ignoreCase, BindingFlags bindingAttr, Binder binder, Object[] args, CultureI
nfo culture, Object[] activationAttributes, Evidence securityInfo, StackCrawlMar
k& stackMark)
at System.Activator.CreateInstance(String assemblyName, String typeName)
at DynamicsGP.GPListener.Program.Main(String[] args)
After double and triple checking with Reflector and outputing everything possible to the console, I wasn’t able to figure out what I did wrong.
The solution was easy, I was not checking the InnerException of the exception. Turn out is was only a missing dll.

April 3, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Can you post sample code using Activator.CreateInstance and WCF? Thanks in advance!