I have a rather annoying issue with VB.net 2005 and Splash Screens.

If I configure a Splash Screen from the Application Property tab, it works
just as expected when the application is installed on a Windows XP machine.

However, when installed on a Windows 2000 machine, I get an unhandled null
reference exception when the Splash Screen tries to close and bring up the
main form.

If you click continue on the unhandled exception dialog, the program will
continue and the main screen is displayed. This happens for ANY program that
I try to install. I am glad it recovers, but doesn't look very professional.

This seems to be a bug in the framework, as I have found other references to
this problem elsewhere on the net - but so far the only recomendation has
been to NOT use the splash screen property when targeting Windows 2000.

This doesn't strike me as a particularly good solution - nor do I want to
rewrite the code to do splash screens manually. Is Microsoft even aware this
is a issue and is a fix on the way? Is there a workaround that can be used?

Many Thanks

Hello Jim,

Unfortunately this is a known issue that a lot of customers ran into.  Here
is the link to the bug report.  A fix will be issued in a future version
of Visual Studio.

http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=114918

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