"sam" <spammenot@gtnincs.com> wrote in message
news:e9F57cYWGHA.3496@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>I use vb.net for in-house development of apps. Many of these apps are small
>in size, with few if any referenced dlls. I'd like my apps to be *totally*
>self-contained--that is, I want to be able to drag and drop the contents of
>the app's directory onto a new machine and have it run *with no
>installation procedures*.
>
> In the past (vb.net 2003) this seemed relatively reliable, assuming that
> the dotnet framework was in place and that any referenced dlls or
> third-party components had their CopyLocal property set to TRUE. Since
> switching to vb.net 2006, this does not always seem to be the case. Apps
> that I have ported from 2003 to 2006, fail to run with errors like "The
> app encountered a problem....blah blah send a report to microsoft".
>
> Is there a 100% accurate manner of making an app totally self-contained in
> that it will run on a machine with the (proper) dotnet framework
> installed? If not, is there a manner in which a more accurate error report
> can be generated on a (non-developer) machine with a bit more useful
> information--such as exactly what is missing?

"sam" <spammenot@gtnincs.com> wrote in message
news:e$%23U9XeWGHA.4424@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> David Browne wrote:
>
>> ClickOnce
>> http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/understanding/windowsforms/2.0/features/clickonce.aspx
>>
>
>
> Unfortunately, clickonce performs an installation per user (installations
> being what I'm hoping to avoid in the first place). In the past, I have
> placed an app (in it's folder with it's references and dependencies) on a
> local machine or even on a linux server and both ran fine from a windows
> box.
>
> It only seems to have gotten more unpredictable with 2005 apps. Hence me
> need to be able to create a folder containing ALL required materials for
> the app.