I received a question about this recently, so i figured i'd elaborate here with a little example...
Let's assume we have the following three dlls:
anycpu.dll -- compiled "any cpu"
x86.dll -- compiled "x86"
x64.dll -- compiled "x64"
And the following three exes:
anycpu.exe -- compiled "any cpu"
x86.exe -- compiled "x86"
x64.exe -- compiled "x64"
What happens if you try to use these exes and dlls together? We have to consider two possible scenarios, running on a 32-bit machine and running on a 64-bit machine...
On a 32-bit x86 machine:
anycpu.exe -- runs as a 32-bit process, can load anycpu.dll and x86.dll, will get BadImageFormatException if it tries to load x64.dll
x86.exe -- runs as a 32-bit process, can load anycpu.dll and x86.dll, will get BadImageFormatException if it tries to load x64.dll
x64.exe -- will get BadImageFormatException when it tries to run
On a 64-bit x64 machine:
anycpu.exe -- runs as a 64-bit process, can load anycpu.dll and x64.dll, will get BadImageFormatException if it tries to load x86.dll
x86.exe -- runs as a 32-bit process, can load anycpu.dll and x86.dll, will get BadImageFormatException if it tries to load x64.dll
x64.exe -- runs as a 64-bit process, can load anycpu.dll and x64.dll, will get BadImageFormatException if it tries to load x86.dll
