Date parsed: 24/04/2008 12:11:04
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:11:04 +0100

Hi there,

I've discovered quite a disturbing attribute of VS 2008. I *had* a
perfectly working 2.0 application compiling under VS 2005, all worked
excellently.

I then upgraded to VS 2008, all went as well as you would expect, with
the exception of C++ libraries that needed updating to be compliant with VS
2008, but those parts are irrelevant at the moment as the code in issue is
VB.NET.

So anyway, I have the application working on 2 Vista machines, it works
great. During a test session I was notified by the tester that the
application crashed on startup, and just wouldn't start, even after
uninstalling / reinstalling, this was since compiling to 2008, but targeting
..NET 2.0. The error in the system event log merely gives one piece of
useful information "System.MissingMethodException".

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zk1a255s(VS.80).aspx

So after racking my brains for a while and going through several
different attempts at debugging this issue I came to one possible solution.
I will also point out that this error is *non* trappable, it just slips
right under the net and crashes the application, so no debug information for
me. As for the possible solution? .NET Framework 2.0 SP1, which I
downloaded and attempted to install.

Error! You can't install that on Vista, you must install .NET Framework
3.0 which has the service pack built into it. Anyway, I opted for .NET 3.5
instead, just incase, which took roughly an hour to install, much to my
amazement.

Anyway, it fixed the problem!

So the bug, VS 2008 compiles to .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1, yet
lets you call a function which apparently doesn't event exist without the
service pack. What is this function? I have no idea yet, as far as I know
I'm not calling anything new, I've merely got the application compiling and
deployed as normal but under VS 2008.

Any input or ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.

Oh the joy of joys! :)

Nick.