Difference between .net2.0 redist and IDE?

[Soundman32 2]

I have written a program that runs fine when launched from a PC with VS2005 installed, but crashes when launched on a PC with just the redistributable installed. The message is the standard dialog box '..has encountered a problem and needs to close'. Please tell microsoft about this problem. There is no exception shown. I can't install the compiler to track it down cause then the problem will go away. It's not a security setting because the tester fixed the problem by installed VS2005 without changing any settings. Any ideas?

[Ed Poore]

Neil_Scales wrote:

standard dialog box '..has encountered a problem and needs to close'. Please tell microsoft about this problem.

You should be able to click on Show Error Data or a button that's labelled something like that, if I remember correctly you click several links through different dialog boxes and you will receive a text box which has the exception details in it, in the middle of details of all the loaded dlls and version information.

Neil_Scales wrote:

It's not a security setting because the tester fixed the problem by installed VS2005 without changing any settings.

Are you referencing a DLL that might only be used in VS.NET (the only example I can think of at the moment is envdte.dll which is the interface libarary for writing VS.NET add-ins (you probably won't be using that :) but it was the only example I could think of). Best bet is to wrap your Main routine inside a try...catch block and dump any error message out to the screen or a file.  E.g.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    try
    {
       // Do normal application stuff here
    }
    catch (Exception exception)
    {
       // Any of these options
       Console.WriteLine(exception.ToString());
       MessageBox.Show(exception.ToString());
       System.IO.File.WriteAllText(@"errorlog.txt", exception.ToString());
    }
}

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You know you're a Land Rover owner when the best route from point A to point B is through the mud. Ed