Loading .net assembly from VB6 code call

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We have a legacy application that has to be integrated with new .net 2.0 our
library. We marked our .net assemply as COM-visible and registered it. We are
using a custom configuration manager that reads config file using location of
the corresponding .net dll. Our requirement is that VB application should be
in a separate folder from the .net class library. When we try to get our
custom configuration section from .net that is being called from VB6
application we are getting an error:

****************************
An error occurred creating the configuration section handler for
SectionDataCollection: Could not load file or assembly 'CustomConfiguration'
or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
(C:\...\My Documents\Visual Studio
2005\Trunk\v.2.1\Instruments\bin\Debug\CustomConfi guration.dll.config line 9)
****************************
This error is triggered by method GetSection of
System.Configuration.Configuration class. The line number specified in the
error message corresponds to custom configuration section declaration. When
we are trying to load CustomConfiguration.dll assembly right before this call
it doesn't help.
According our configuration limits we would like to keep .net assemblies
outside of GAC.
If we put .net class library in the same directory as VB application
everything works fine.

Thanks in advance.
--
Mike