VS 2010 .NET application release compile crashes on XP or Server 2003

Question

I was looking at moving one of my applications from VS2010 to VS2012. The solution consists of quite a few projects, so I'll try to outline the main parts.

Entry point is a WPF application based on .NET 3.5 SP1. This project references a .NET 2.0 class library and a .NET 2.0 C++/CLR Library compiled with the VC90 libraries of VS2008. The .NET 2.0 class library also uses the C++ lib.

I don't use a lot of external binaries. In fact besides WiX the only thing is the WPF Toolkit (http://wpf.codeplex.com/releases/view/29117).

So what happens? I compile the application with VS2010 on Win8 (VS2008 installed for the VC90 libraries) and everything runs fineon every platform. Now when I port the solution to VS2012 (of course again with VS2008 and VS2010 installed for the VC90 libs) and create a build it works fine on Win7, Win8 and Server 2008R2. However the binaries created by VS2012 crash upon startup on XP and Server 2003. I checked for installed .NET 3.5 SP1 and verified it by using the binaries created by VS2010. They work.

The error is simple crash report window and an event log entry with the following details: .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting Faulting application application.exe, version 1.0.0.0, stamp 50a39d24, faulting module kernel32.dll, version 5.2.3790.4480, stamp 49c51e7e, debug? 0, fault address 0x0000bef7.

This does not help me at all. Any ideas on how to fix this or where to look further?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Thanks for the input. It pointed me in the right direction. I did a crash dump analysis that led me to rechecking the eventlog entries. And indeed I found another entry I had missed before. There was a side-by-side error that originated from wrongly versioned VC90 DLLs on the new machine. A VS2008 SP1 security update was missing. After installing that and recompiling the solution it now works as expected.

Thank you.