Quote Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker View Post
One other point: What appears to be happening is that you are getting an exception in the Form Load event. There is an interesting (to put it politely) feature in some hardware/OS combinations where an exception in the Load event will not be seen. All that happens in this case is that execution of the Load event code simply ends. That appears to be a pretty fair description of what you are seeing.

If this is being written for a class, have you covered structured exception handling? In this case, you will see the exception only if you wrap the code in a Try...Catch clause, and show the exception in a messagebox from the Catch clause. Also, as far as I know, this ONLY impacts Form Load, and it is not likely to be fixed anytime soon, since MS doesn't really feel that it is a bug.
If I recall correctly, this is an issue on 64-bit Windows and it results from a difference of opinion between the .NET team and the Windows team. The .NET folks can't "fix" the problem without cooperation from the Windows folks, who aren't prepared to play ball. Presumably the change would have ramifications other than making Windows Forms development a better experience.