ANTS Memory Profiler 8

The system cannot find the file specified

This page relates to both ANTS Performance Profiler and ANTS Memory Profiler.

When profiling an ASP .NET web application, ANTS Performance or Memory Profiler may throw the following exception:

Unable to start profiler - exception details
System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The system cannot find the file specified

ANTS Performance and Memory Profilers rely on an number of programs to be installed on the system to work properly. Some are web browser components and some are to verify that application pools are running. This error can occur if one of the following files are missing:

  • %systemroot%\shdocvw.dll
  • w3wp.exe, the path to which is found in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IISAdmin\ImagePath, substituting w3wp.exe for intetinfo.exe
  • In IIS 6 only: %systemroot%\system32\cscript.exe
  • In IIS 6 only: %systemroot%\system32\iisapp.exe
  • In IIS 7 only: appcmd.exe, located in the same folder as w3wp.exe above


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