Troubleshooting with a .NET application that doesn't start

Question

I have a recurrent issue with .NET applications that don't start (on others systems than mine). The fact is that I cannot, unfortunately, always create a smoothly running package. Therefore I often have to send a ZIP file of my Debug or Release folder.

My real problem is that these applications doesn't tell WHY they're not starting. I just get no exception at all if I start them from the command line, neither in the EventLog, or even if I try to print on the output the result of a Try Catch block on all my application... am I missing something?

Most of the time, it's missing libraries, or security related issues. But it would be nice to find what exactly is going on painlessly :D

Answer 1

Have you tried looking at the fusion logs? Suzanne Cook has an article on this here.

Another thing to do (to minimise silent errors): minimise your Main method; the reason for this is that JIT works per-method, and if it can't JIT Main it can't use your exception handling:

/* for winform, you still new [STAThread] here */
static void Main() {
  try {
     MainCore();
  } catch (Exception ex) {
     // shout about it
  }
}

[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)] // usually overkill
static void MainCore() {
  // real code
}

Answer 2

Take a look at the Assembly Binding Log Viewer.