Why does Visual Studio's "Unused References..." button not flag System.Xml and System.Xml.Linq?

I was trying to finish up a VB.NET class library project when I tried to remove all unused references. I know for a fact that I'm not explicitly using any thing from the 开发者_Go百科System.Xml and System.Xml.Linq assemblies yet the "Unused References..." button never flags them for removal.

In fact I even tried "Unused References..." on a blank project and it still never flagged them.

The only reason I could think of is that either mscorlib.dll or System.dll is using System.Xml.dll or System.Xml.Linq.dll. Are they safe to remove?

Try removing them and see if the project builds - that will tell you.