How to fix this bizarre ConfigurationSection exceptions? <p>I was tasked with making this third party software run on our server, but we only have partial access to the code, the rest exists only as pre-compiled libraries. One of those libraries throws enigmatic exceptions and I can't figure out why. I am completely oblivious to Visual Studio and C#, and this is making no sense at all to me.</p> <p>What I initially get is:</p> <blockquote> <p>Unhandled Exception:</p> <p>Unhandled Exception: System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'GroupsImporter.Program' threw an exception. ---></p> <p>System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: Configuration system failed to initialize ---></p> <p>System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: <strong>Unrecognized configuration section ThirdPartyCompany.Framework.Core.Configuration.v1.2. (Y:\path-to-executable\GroupsImporter.exe.Config line 67)</strong></p> <p>at System.Configuration.ConfigurationSchemaErrors.ThrowIfErrors(Boolean ignoreLocal)</p> <p>at System.Configuration.BaseConfigurationRecord.ThrowIfParseErrors(ConfigurationSchemaErrors schemaErrors)</p> <p>at System.Configuration.ClientConfigurationSystem.EnsureInit(String configKey)</p> <p>--- End of inner exception stack trace ---</p> </blockquote> <p>The configuration file looks like this:</p> <pre class="lang-xml prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?&gt; &lt;configuration&gt; &lt;configSections&gt; &lt;section name="AdWordsApi" type="System.Configuration.DictionarySectionHandler"/&gt; &lt;section name="AdWords.Common.Configuration" type="AdWords.Common.Configuration.AdWordsConfiguration, AdWords.Common"/&gt; &lt;/configSections&gt; &lt;appSettings&gt; ... &lt;/appSettings&gt; &lt;AdWords.Common.Configuration Budget ="xxx" CPC="xxx" EstoqueMinimo="x"&gt; ... &lt;/AdWords.Common.Configuration&gt; &lt;AdWordsApi&gt; ... &lt;/AdWordsApi&gt; &lt;system.web&gt; ... &lt;/system.web&gt; &lt;system.net&gt; ... &lt;/system.net&gt; &lt;ThirdPartyCompany.Framework.Core.Configuration.v1.2&gt; ... &lt;/ThirdPartyCompany.Framework.Core.Configuration.v1.2&gt; &lt;/configuration&gt; </code></pre> <p>In turn if I remove the section it is complaining about, I get this:</p> <blockquote> <p>Unhandled Exception: System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'GroupsImporter.Program' threw an exception. ---></p> <p>System.Configuration.ConfigurationException: <strong>Configuraton section ThirdPartyCompany.Framework.Core.Configuration.v1.2 could not be found.</strong></p> <p>at ThirdPartyCompany.Framework.Core.Guard.Against[TException](Boolean assertion, String message)</p> <p>at ThirdPartyCompany.Framework.Core.Configuration.ConfigurationSection.GetConfiguration()</p> <p>at ThirdPartyCompany.Framework.Core.IoCContainerWrapper.Implementation.IoCThirdPartyCompanyContainer.loadRegisterConfiguration()</p> <p>//And the stack goes on...</p> </blockquote> <p>I have no idea on how to solve this issue. I don't have access to the code where the ServiceConfig class is implemented or where the config is consumed. Any ideas about what is going on, and how to fix this issue?</p> <p>Edit: It was supposedly working on the company's server exactly as provided.</p>