Question

We have a .NET application which targets .NET 3.5. Our clients run it from a shared drive (very infrequently) in order to have a central config file location.

We have noticed that if a workstation accesses the shared drive and runs the program, but does not have .NET 3.5 installed, nothing happens, no error, no exception, no log entry, it just doesn’t launch.

• Why is there no error message shown
  in windows by the CLR?

• Is there something I can put at the
  beginning of the code that would
  ensure that a proper error message is
  displayed?

It is not an option to run an installer that would check for prereqs, as we are only installing it in one central location.

Thanks.

---

Ideally, we wouldn’t have to have a wrapper to query for the .NET version, it seems that the program is failing to launch, and windows should be reporting this somewhere. I can’t believe it would just silently fail.

Answer 1

Try something like this you app.config;

<configuration>
    <startup>
        <supportedRuntime version="v3.5" />
    </startup>
</configuration>

I get a nice little dialog, like so;

---------------------------
moreverfoo.exe - .NET Framework Initialization Error
---------------------------
To run this application, you first must install one of the following 
versions of the .NET Framework:
  v3.5
Contact your application publisher for instructions about obtaining the 
appropriate version of the .NET Framework.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------