Program won't start without a Visual Studio installation?

Question

We have been working on a booking system for a company. When we first tried to run it on their computer it said we needed to download the .NET Framework 4.0. So we did that (or rather we downloaded version 4.5 as the link for 4.0 didn't work). Now, when we try to run it, nothing happens.

We've built the program in C# with Entity Framework - Code First if that narrows it down.

Are we missing something in the settings when publishing? We've tried compiling it in release and the publish wizard but neither work.

Answer 1

This is most probably due to a missing assembly. In your development configuration, you have all of your libraries to run the program and in the deployment, there is/are missing dll(s).

What you may try is to control the GAC of the development machine, and try to locate if any of the libraries you are using except .net libraries are installed in the GAC. Then, you may have been referencing the dll from GAC, and in the deployment this library may be missing in the GAC. I have seen this in a sharepoint project before.

Also, checking the windows event log is useful. You may locate the actual exception.

p.s. if this is a asp.net project, do not forget to run regiis.exe after framework deployment.