CrystalDecisions.Windows.Forms.DLL Not Found.

[guht]

I have a VB.NET application created in Visual Studio 2005. The application uses crystal reports. It works fine on the developer machine, but I am receiving the following error on a client machine:

System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'CrystalDecisions.Windows.Forms, Version=11.5.3700.0

This is a standalone executable and not distributable application. I tried manually running the crystal reports .net distributable application on the client machine. The file is called "CRRedist2005_x86.msi" and its found under "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\CrystalReports"

This installed several DLL files on the client machine, which I verified and found under the following directory "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Business Objects\2.7\Bin"

However, it did not install the CrystalDecisions.Windows.Forms.dll that is found on my machine under "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Business Objects\2.7\Managed"

I tried copying these files over to the client machine and registering them manually, but it didnt like that either.

Someone please point me in the right direction! Thanks!

[Hack]

Welcome to the forums.

I think what has to happen is a formal installation of your program, not crystal reports.

There is no such thing as a stand-alone VB app. There are, and will always be, dependency files that also must be installed on each client machine.

[guht]

Thanks for your response! I hesitated when writing that part initially afraid that I would mis-state my situation. When I referred to 'standalone' application I simply meant that I compiled it as a standard executable, and not as a distributable self-installing application.

I am aware that these standalone executables still have dependencies, and that these dependencies need to be registered, but in the past all we had to do is copy any DLLs referenced in the project to client machines and register those dependencies. I am coming from a VB6 background, and I have never had any problems with this method in the past.

In VB6 you were able to open the project file in notepad and look at all the required dependencies of the project. Is there a way to do that with VB.NET project?

I understand your suggestion about creating and install package for my application, but I am unsure why I cant register any necessary dependencies manually?

Any clarification here would be great!