Could not load file or assembly 'Magick.NET-x86.DLL' or one of its dependencies. The specified module could not be found

I've seen the ticket “Could not load file or assembly 'Magick.NET-x86.DLL' or one of its dependencies” by Harsh Gupta and I'm having the same problem but without those solutions working for me.

I have an web application including ImageMagick that is freshly installed on a new Windows Server 2012 instance (that we're migrating to from a Windows Server 2008 R2 instance). The application runs ok on Server 2008 and locally, but not on Server 2012.

I have rebuilt the project after upgrading Magick.Net from 6.8.7.502 to 7.0.7.300, in the hope that the .Net Standard / .Net Core support mentioned in the Readme, introduced in 7.0.6, would solve my problem, but to no avail. Before doing that, I had also installed VC++ 2012 and 2015 as Harsh Gupta mentioned in their accepted answer.

Despite all this, I'm still getting a "HTTP Error 500.0 - Internal Server Error" page, telling me:

Module: AspNetInitializationExceptionModule
Notification: BeginRequest
Handler: ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0
Error Code: 0x00000000
Requested URL: [redacted]
Physical Path: [redacted, but correct]
Logon Method: Not yet determined
Logon User: Not yet determined

The Event log shows a Warning event from ASP.NET 4.0.30319.0 with an Event ID of 1310 and the following Stack trace:

Event code: 3008 
Event message: A configuration error has occurred. 
Event time: 9/20/2017 6:20:40 PM 
Event time (UTC): 9/20/2017 6:20:40 PM 
Event ID: 4775ecdb4601401ca30aa057f77ae78a 
Event sequence: 1 
Event occurrence: 1 
Event detail code: 0 

Application information: 
    Application domain: [redacted]
    Trust level: Full 
    Application Virtual Path: / 
    Application Path: [redacted]
    Machine name: [redacted]

Process information: 
    Process ID: 5096 
    Process name: w3wp.exe 
    Account name: IIS APPPOOL\[redacted]

Exception information: 
    Exception type: ConfigurationErrorsException 
    Exception message: Could not load file or assembly 'Magick.NET-x86.DLL' or one of its dependencies. The specified module could not be found.
   at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssemblyHelper(String assemblyName, Boolean starDirective)
   at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAllAssembliesFromAppDomainBinDirectory()
   at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssembly(AssemblyInfo ai)
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetReferencedAssemblies(CompilationSection compConfig)
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetPreStartInitMethodsFromReferencedAssemblies()
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.CallPreStartInitMethods(String preStartInitListPath, Boolean& isRefAssemblyLoaded)
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.ExecutePreAppStart()
   at System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.Initialize(ApplicationManager appManager, IApplicationHost appHost, IConfigMapPathFactory configMapPathFactory, HostingEnvironmentParameters hostingParameters, PolicyLevel policyLevel, Exception appDomainCreationException)

Could not load file or assembly 'Magick.NET-x86.DLL' or one of its dependencies. The specified module could not be found.
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly._nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.nLoad(AssemblyName fileName, String codeBase, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly locationHint, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.InternalLoadAssemblyName(AssemblyName assemblyRef, Evidence assemblySecurity, RuntimeAssembly reqAssembly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean throwOnFileNotFound, Boolean forIntrospection, Boolean suppressSecurityChecks)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.InternalLoad(String assemblyString, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, IntPtr pPrivHostBinder, Boolean forIntrospection)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly.InternalLoad(String assemblyString, Evidence assemblySecurity, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean forIntrospection)
   at System.Reflection.Assembly.Load(String assemblyString)
   at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssemblyHelper(String assemblyName, Boolean starDirective)



Request information: 
    Request URL: [redacted] 
    Request path: / 
    User host address: [redacted]
    User:  
    Is authenticated: False 
    Authentication Type:  
    Thread account name: IIS APPPOOL\[redacted]

Thread information: 
    Thread ID: 8 
    Thread account name: IIS APPPOOL\[redacted]
    Is impersonating: False 
    Stack trace:    at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssemblyHelper(String assemblyName, Boolean starDirective)
   at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAllAssembliesFromAppDomainBinDirectory()
   at System.Web.Configuration.CompilationSection.LoadAssembly(AssemblyInfo ai)
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetReferencedAssemblies(CompilationSection compConfig)
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetPreStartInitMethodsFromReferencedAssemblies()
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.CallPreStartInitMethods(String preStartInitListPath, Boolean& isRefAssemblyLoaded)
   at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.ExecutePreAppStart()
   at System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.Initialize(ApplicationManager appManager, IApplicationHost appHost, IConfigMapPathFactory configMapPathFactory, HostingEnvironmentParameters hostingParameters, PolicyLevel policyLevel, Exception appDomainCreationException)


Custom event details: 

Looking in the webroot, the bin folder does contain Magick.NET-x86.dll (and Magick.NET-Q16-x86.dll and Magick.NET-Q16-x86.Native.dll), and the IIS_IUSRs group does have read access to these DLLs (and all the others).

While it is a 64-bit server, the AppPool does have Enable 32-bit applications set to True. Changing the AppPool's Managed Pipeline Mode from Integrated to Classic also has no effect. I do note, however, that the number of applications for the AppPool is listed as zero (despite the website's advanced settings dialog showing the correct AppPool name):

I am completely at a loss and we are behind schedule on the migration of this application now, so any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Thanks!

Edited to add: There is a little more information at ticket #107 on Github.

In a separate conversation on Github with the creator of ImageMagick, we eventually got to checking the version numbers of DLLs, which led us to realise that — as well as the expected files Magick.NET-Q16-x86.dll and Magick.NET-Q16-x86-Native.dll both at version 7.0.7.300 — there was also a file Magick.NET-x86.dll that is version 6.8.7.502.

Quoting Dirk Lemstra directly:

The Magick.NET-x86.dll file is an old file that should not be there. Can you remove that file and check if that resolves your issue? I apologize for not noticing this much earlier.

You no longer need to install the C++ redistributable. The necessary libraries are statically linked which means that you don't need to install that anymore.

Removing that superfluous file has solved the problem. 🎉