I have developed two programs so far in VB2005 (not express). I really love the click once deployment feature. it all seems to work great.

Now to the question...

When the program gets installed it creates an "application reference" in the start menu of the user who installed it. Reading MSDN, it "seems" the actual EXE is embedded somewhere in the local settings folders somewhere. We want to install my 2nd app on a server and add it as a scheduled job. My administrator is a bit wary of doing this since she can't see exactly where the exe is going to run from etc.. is there anyone who can explain this a bit more simply that MSDN did?

Even though you may start the application from a network share the app will installed and run from the user's "Local Settings" folder.

Example:

C:\Documents And Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Apps\2.0\....
Below \Apps\2.0 the directories will be named randomly.

Put the following in your Form_Load statement and you will get a general idea of the location:

MsgBox(My.Application.Info.DirectoryPath)

The significant advantage that I have found using this deployment method is that an app can be updated without having to worry about having all users exit the program first.



Best Regards,
Earl Francis

Thanks for the quick reply. I saw a post somewhere that said that any user can run the application. All you have to do is copy the "application reference" from the start menu to another location. Do you know if this is true? or does each user have to install it?

Thanks again!

Generally speaking, you can just point a user to the location of the .application file (by creating a shortcut for instance) and then they will be prompted to install the app.

Obviously if you don't want everyone running an application then directory rights or programmatic rights should be used to ensure that only the correct users can access the program.



Best Regards,
Earl Francis