VS 2005 project distribution problem

[Guest]

Hi, I've made som applications with VS 2005 and now I try to distribute them
to another machine. This aint working unless that machine has also got VS
2005 installed.

I get an error that looks like this (translated from swedish): "This program
could not start as its configuration is wrong. The problem might be corrected
if you reinstall the program."

The program is very small and I only exported the .exe file.

Did anyone see this before?

 

[chris_doran]

Hi, I've made som applications with VS 2005 and now I try to distribute them
to another machine. This aint working unless that machine has also got VS
2005 installed.

I get an error that looks like this (translated from swedish): "This program
could not start as its configuration is wrong. The problem might be corrected
if you reinstall the program."

The program is very small and I only exported the .exe file.

Did anyone see this before?

Yes. It's a pain. Unlike previous versions which listed the DLLs they
couldn't find, 2005 is very unhelpful about missing files. Did you also
export the .exe.config (if you have one)? Have you installed the .NET
Framework and any extensions you use?

I'm sorry I can't be much more helpful. After days of fiddling when we
first used VS 2005 we eventually came up with a list of things to
install to run things without VS 2005 itself, but I don't really know
how we did it.

Chris

 

[Guest]

Yes. It's a pain. Unlike previous versions which listed the DLLs they
couldn't find, 2005 is very unhelpful about missing files. Did you also
export the .exe.config (if you have one)? Have you installed the .NET
Framework and any extensions you use?

I'm sorry I can't be much more helpful. After days of fiddling when we
first used VS 2005 we eventually came up with a list of things to
install to run things without VS 2005 itself, but I don't really know
how we did it.

Chris

Thanks for answering Chris.

The program makes use of some dlls but I don't have any .exe.config file to
see which. The computer I'm trying to run on has got the .net framework 2.0
so that should not be the problem.

Hmm, come to think of it the program ran before on that system. Maybe I
changed something in the project setup that ties it closer to VS 2005.

Mike

 

[Guest]

Hi, I've made som applications with VS 2005 and now I try to distribute them

to another machine. This aint working unless that machine has also got VS
2005 installed.

Most likely, the problem is that you do not correctly distribute the runtime
dlls with your application.
See here for more info:
http://www.codeproject.com/cpp/vcredists_x86.asp

 

[Arnaud Debaene]

Hi, I've made som applications with VS 2005 and now I try to distribute
them
to another machine. This aint working unless that machine has also got VS
2005 installed.

I get an error that looks like this (translated from swedish): "This
program
could not start as its configuration is wrong. The problem might be
corrected
if you reinstall the program."

The program is very small and I only exported the .exe file.

Did anyone see this before?

Use depends (www.dependencywalker.com) on the target machine to see what is
the mising DLL.

I suspect you are missing the CRT dll (eg, msvcrt80.dll and msvcp80.dll).
Visual 2005 has introduced a versionning scheme aimed at reducing DLL hell.
With this model, an exe specifies in a manifest it's exact dependencies
(using checksums of the required DLLs). With Windows XP and up, the system
can have multiple versions of the same DLL installed on a special "side by
side" system folder.
Although the whole idea behind this evolution is good, I believe MS missed
it's goal with regard to usability, since redistribution of those
"versionned" exe and DLLs can be quite problematic. Here is a good entry
point concerning redistribution of the new CRT :
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235299.aspx

Arnaud
MVP - VC