WPF App crashes outside of Visual Studio

Question

I've got a WPF app that runs perfectly fine inside VS.NET, but if I try to run it outside of VS.NET, I get a "... has encountered a problem and needs to close.." dialog. This happens in Debug and Release modes. Why is this happening?

Answer 1

Most likely this is an uncaught exception. You might want to try using the Application.DispatcherUnhandledException Event to display a message box with the exception to narrow down the problem:

Add this to your App.xaml as an attribute to the <Application> tag:

DispatcherUnhandledException="Application_DispatcherUnhandledException"

while the implementation of that handler might look like the following:

private void Application_DispatcherUnhandledException(object sender, System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherUnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)
{
    System.Windows.MessageBox.Show(e.Exception.ToString());
}

But without much context this could be anything that is causing it and you probably have a better understanding where it comes from when looking at the exception.

Answer 2

Make sure that you have all libraries that your executable requires to run in the same folder as the executable, as well as any necessary configuration files or manifest files.

Have you already attempted to run the application straight from the debug/release folders? Are all of your references marked as "Copy to output directory"?

Another thing to check is that your project file is not configured to add a parameter to your application.