I have a small .NET Framework 4.8 (C#) console app that references a DLL from another application, which in turn depends on a large number of DLLs from the other application. If I copy the dependencies to the folder with the .exe, it works fine:

bin/
  my_console_app.exe             --> References "referenced.dll"
  referenced.dll                 --> Depends on a.dll, b.dll, ...
  a.dll
  b.dll
  ...

But to make things easier to manage, I’d like to put the dependencies in their own directory:

bin/
  lib/
    a.dll
    b.dll
    ...
  my_console_app.exe
  referenced.dll
  ...

After considerable research, I modified the application config file (App.config which Visual Studio copies to “my_console_app.exe.config”) to include a <probing> element like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <startup> 
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.8" />
    </startup>
    <runtime>
        <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
            <probing privatePath="lib" />
        </assemblyBinding>
    </runtime>
</configuration>

However this fails: the console app throws FileNotFoundException on startup with the message “Could not load file or assembly ‘referenced.dll’ or one of its dependencies.”

What have I missed?