Browsing the GAC

GAC in fact is here: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\assembly\GAC_MSIL 

Obsolete but possibly still useful old trick from http://msmvps.com/blogs/bill/archive/2005/09/20/66921.aspx

You can make it possible to browse the GAC like a set of folders and files and hence access assemblies that are only in the GAC.  Typically I just use a command prompt to do this, but there's a registry hack which lets you do it from explorer:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Fusion]
"DisableCacheViewer"=hex:10

Toogle the value to 0 to go back to the usual view, non zero for folder and file view.  Now when you do that you might find some interesting assemblies.  My favourite at the moment that comes with VS 2005, is:

C:\WINDOWS\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.VisualStudio.Zip

Oh, and an interesting side effect of this is you can now browse to a file in the GAC and add it as a reference to your Visual Studio project.