Visual Basic 2005 Express Studio trouble - apps will not run

Anyone ever run into this? I have to step out of LAMP-land and use VB in the context of working with some partners, but I'm stuck at a fundamental roadblock.

Environment:

• Windows XP, fully up to date with patches
• Visual Basic Studio 2005 Express, SP1

Symptoms:

• Originally I could get apps to build and run just fine, and the only obstacles I had were the ones inherent in working in VB.
• One day the program said hey, you better register or I'll stop working in a couple of weeks.
• So I registered it.
• Around that time (not 100% sure that it coincided exactly), its behavior changed: every time I try and run an app (console OR windows forms-based), nothing happens besides a bit of flickering of the windows and then I'm dumped back into code-edit mode.
  • No error messages appear, in the debug window or the immediate window or the system's Event Manager.
  • No console is visibly created, if it's a console app.
  • Attempting to set a breakpoint in the code OR just Stepping Into it so that only the first instruction will be carried out has no effect; I still just get a twiddle-flash of windows and then am dumped back to where I started, with the program considering itself over.

Attempts to fix have included:

• Fiddling with prefs (which I hadn't touched in the first place). No change.
• Making brand new projects in case my original got silently corrupted somehow. No dice.
• Making a new, basic project following the Help instructions exactly (creates a Windows Forms app with a single text field, a button and a web-browsing area). No dice.
• Re-installing VB2005StudioExpress. Nope.
• Re-installing without applying Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions Service Pack 1 .. no difference.
• "Completely" un-installing and re-installing VB2005StudioExpress.
  • Of course, after all that it still considers itself registered. Do I have to edit the bleeding Registry directly to get it to forget that? Gag. OK, where would I find this?

A dev environment where I can code and compile but never run anything is pretty flabbergasting. (Especially when it used to work.)

It's driving me batty. Clues appreciated.

P.S. Is there good reason to believe that getting the $300 version of Visual Studio would fix this? It's plausible to me that the same bug screwing up the free version will also interfere with the pay version, in which case you just threw hundreds of dollars away.

P.P.S. Visual Studio 2008 isn't an option, as the partner org isn't using that.

    1 comment(s)  

Did you uninstall and reinstall the .NET runtime(s)?
      ...posted by Andrew on September 11, 2007 10:11 AM

Add a comment...