my dotnet application doesn't run on windows server 2003

Question

I've written a server programm lets call it progie , this progie working just like a clock on my windows 7 (my ms VS is installed on windows 7) after compiling the progie and transfer it to windows server 2003 I tried to run the progie but no chance.

here is the symptom :

when i was trying to run the progie I was also monitoring the task manager , in task manager it shows the progie for only couple of seconds and then the poor program vanishes from the task manager or its better to say from the memory.

I'm using .net 3.5 / C# libraries : generics , diagnostic , IO

installed frameworks on my server : dotnetfx 2.0 dotnetfx 3.0 dotnetfx 3.5

windows server 2003

Answer 1

Note that your progie runs fine on Windows 7 with VS installed and fails on the server. Possible causes can be,

1. progie depends on third party libraries, which you did not yet install on the server. Things like DevExpress libraries and so on will lead to such problems. The fix is to deploy the dependencies along with your executable.

2. Your code raises unhandled exception on server 2003. If so, you should be able to find crash records for progie in Application event log. The fix is to capture crash dump and analyze it. http://dumpanalysis.org

Answer 2

Since it doesn't even crash, just vanishes, it sounds to me like a .Net FW mismatch (ie you're missing the right version) or another missing resource. Easiest way to get a hold of this: download SysInternals' ProcMon, and monitor which files/DLLs progie tries to open and fails. That should put you on the right track.