Running VB application on System without VB?

[Guv]

All of my VB applications have been done for fun and for my own use. I compile & run them from the Visual Studio environment.

Some friends of mine have seen a few of my applicatons and would like to run them on their systems.

I have never atempted to Package an application for use on another system. Will the Package & Deployment Wizard do a good job? I am going to try to hack the Wizard first and then look at the MSDN Help Files I have.

Any hints at how to get started would be appreciated.

What if the Target system runs Windows 95, XP, 2K, or another OS instead of Windows 98 SE (My OS).? Will there be problems?

What about different Video controllers? I assume that this will not be a problem. Will running at a different resolution or color mode cause a problem? I intend to experiment a bit with this on my system, but would welcome advice.

If I experiment on my system in the Visual Studio environment and the applicaiton seems to work okay, will this indicate that the deployed application will also work okay with changes in screen resolution & color mode?

I hope at least some of the above can be answered, and I will appreciate any advice I can get. I like to hack, but do not really want to reinvent the wheel.

[kleinma]

all these things you mention are possible problems you will run into when install apps on other machines.. the OS, resolution, PC speed, will all affect your app and how it runs... that is why a lot of work goes into developing for multi platforms...

your best bet is to make a setup package and then install it on your friends machines and see what happends.. you can work out the bugs once you know specifically what will and will not work

[nemaroller]

What kleinma is basically saying is this:

1) You have to design your forms to be resolution-independent... there is code from MSDN on how to do that... this way your forms look approximately close to the resolution you designed them in.
(^this is probably your biggest concern)

2) Don't worry about video drivers, the system handles that for you.

3) The P & D wizard should include all the files needed by your application to run on other systems. I say should, because depending if you used database features, sometimes things aren't rosy.

4) The only thing you need to be concerned about as far as differences in Windows platforms is that 95/98/ME use a different kernel than Windows NT/2000/XP... and you only need to be concerned about this if you use API's... if you don't know what they are, don't worry about em, you're not using them.

5) VB programs don't work on other platforms such as Unix, Mac, Linux... but they work on ALL windows platforms... 95/98/Me/Nt/2000/XP