Trouble running setup package after Publishing in Visual Studio 2008

Question

I've got a small winform application that I've written that is running fine in the IDE. It builds with no errors or warnings. It's not using any third party controls. I'm coding in C# in Visual Studio 2008. When I Build --> Publish the application, everything seems to work fine. However, when I go and attempt to install the application via the setup.exe file I get an error message that says, "Application cannot be started." The error details are below:

ERROR DETAILS
Following errors were detected during this operation.
* [3/18/2010 10:50:56 AM] System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
    - The referenced assembly is not installed on your system. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800736B3)
    - Source: System.Deployment
    - Stack trace:
        at System.Deployment.Internal.Isolation.IStore.GetAssemblyInformation(UInt32 Flags, IDefinitionIdentity DefinitionIdentity, Guid& riid)
        at System.Deployment.Internal.Isolation.Store.GetAssemblyManifest(UInt32 Flags, IDefinitionIdentity DefinitionIdentity)
        at System.Deployment.Application.ComponentStore.GetAssemblyManifest(DefinitionIdentity asmId)
        at System.Deployment.Application.ComponentStore.GetSubscriptionStateInternal(DefinitionIdentity subId)
        at System.Deployment.Application.SubscriptionStore.GetSubscriptionStateInternal(SubscriptionState subState)
        at System.Deployment.Application.ComponentStore.CollectCrossGroupApplications(Uri codebaseUri, DefinitionIdentity deploymentIdentity, Boolean& identityGroupFound, Boolean& locationGroupFound, String& identityGroupProductName)
        at System.Deployment.Application.SubscriptionStore.CommitApplication(SubscriptionState& subState, CommitApplicationParams commitParams)
        at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.InstallApplication(SubscriptionState& subState, ActivationDescription actDesc)
        at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.PerformDeploymentActivation(Uri activationUri, Boolean isShortcut, String textualSubId, String deploymentProviderUrlFromExtension, BrowserSettings browserSettings, String& errorPageUrl)
        at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.ActivateDeploymentWorker(Object state)

I'm not sure what else to do. The only slightly odd thing I used in this application is the SQL Compact Server. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Andrew

Answer 1

This looks like a very low-level Windows error. With some luck there's a breadcrumb in the Windows event log that tells you what DLL is missing on the target machine. A damaged registry is possible too.