Question

Made an application which targets .net 4 client.
Created an installer using Inno Setup and modified the script to look for and install .net 4 client if its missing. Installer works fine and .net does get installed.

My problem is that I installed my app on 2 PC’s and I get the following issues.

PC 1 – App does not run and not even present in task manager.
PC 2 – App is running (visible in task manager) but won’t display.

I created an installer using VS 2010 just so I could see the dependencies detected in case I’m missing a dll or something and sure enough I was. I rebuilt the Inno installer with the missing dll but I still have the same issue.

Is there anything I can do/look at to give an indication to the problem?

Answer 1

Check the Event Viewer to start with and see if that sheds light on why the application doesn’t start.

Then the questions to ask are:

1. Does it run on the development machine, as an installed program not in VS2010?
2. Are all dependencies including non-NET ones installed?
3. Does it require any resources/dependencies at specific locations
   (are these hard coded literal paths rather than relative ones) and
   have these paths been created?
4. Being WPF does it use any Silverlight functionality? (This will need
   to be installed separately from .NET)
5. Has it been installed with the correct privileges?
6. Are there any data sources required, that haven’t been set-up or
   can’t be connected to when needed?
7. Is the application being prevented from running due to UAC (Vista,
   Windows 7) or anti-virus/firewall software?