NullReferenceException mystery

Answer 1

If you want to be able to debug the application when the exception happens, create a project that will launch the application upon starting the debugger (see Project Properties->Debug tab). The project need not have any source code.

Afterwards, tell the debugger to break on any thrown exception (see Debug->Exceptions) and launch your application with F5.

Answer 2

As Ben says in the comments, the null reference is coming from:

EEMSReports.My.MyApplication.Main(String[] Args) in 17d14f5c-a337-4978-8281-53493378c1071.vb : line 81

This indicates a temporary compiler-generated file. From memory, it's possible that this is a bug in the C# compiler, where it deletes the temporary file before trying to use it. But I would set Visual Studio to break on unhandled exceptions, and then see where the exception is thrown.