Visual C++ 2013 Program Works in IDE but loads nothing for display after InstallShield LE Install

Question

So the program works perfect fine, runs without errors, etc during a build/run in the IDE but when I move to the Installshield Install and attempt to install it all files appear to install but the program doesn't load any kind of display. I can see that the program is open when I do a ctrl+alt+del and go to task manager but it doesn't appear to be running any other way. I don't receive any kind of errors and I'm unsure of how else to check what's going on here. While building the projects the only indicator of a problem is the following warning which has been around since I've started my project it seems and previous builds of the install have worked

Warning: 2>ISEXP : warning : -7235: InstallShield could not create the software identification tag because the Tag Creator ID setting in the General Information view is empty.

Also during build of the program I get these: 1>SOIL.lib(image_DXT.obj) : warning LNK4099: PDB 'vc120.pdb' was not found with 'SOIL.lib(image_DXT.obj)' or at 'C:\Users\Daddy\Downloads\3 Jul 2016\Final New AI\Final\Battleship\Debug\vc120.pdb'; linking object as if no debug info 1>SOIL.lib(image_helper.obj) : warning LNK4099: PDB 'vc120.pdb' was not found with 'SOIL.lib(image_helper.obj)' or at 'C:\Users\Daddy\Downloads\3 Jul 2016\Final New AI\Final\Battleship\Debug\vc120.pdb'; linking object as if no debug info 1>SOIL.lib(SOIL.obj) : warning LNK4099: PDB 'vc120.pdb' was not found with 'SOIL.lib(SOIL.obj)' or at 'C:\Users\Daddy\Downloads\3 Jul 2016\Final New AI\Final\Battleship\Debug\vc120.pdb'; linking object as if no debug info 1>SOIL.lib(stb_image_aug.obj) : warning LNK4099: PDB 'vc120.pdb' was not found with 'SOIL.lib(stb_image_aug.obj)' or at 'C:\Users\Daddy\Downloads\3 Jul 2016\Final New AI\Final\Battleship\Debug\vc120.pdb'; linking object as if no debug info

Not sure if that means anything though. The vc120.pdb is located in the debug folder of the project.

Answer 1

If a program does not work once deployed to a fresh machine, then something is missing in the deployment. One of the more common cases is a missing dependency DLL, either one of your own, or something from a third party. However this often results in an error message when attempting to run your executable, so if your scenario is a missing dependency, it's a softer dependency than the typical static link dependency. So, rather than being told by Windows, you need to dive in to figure out what isn't there.

You will probably need to debug into the running but headless behavior of your app. Try a tool like Process Monitor to identify relevant missing files, registry? Or get a developer of the app to help if you're not a developer yourself; they may know better what missing dependencies would result in this behavior. Is it missing a registry key or configuration file? Is it missing a dynamically loaded DLL? Does it log anything, or can it be configured to do so? Can you figure out what it's doing by grabbing your PDBs and attaching with WinDbg? Can it be modified to log or to issue errors in these or similar scenarios so you can better debug deployment problems?

Once you identify what's missing, you can configure the installation to deploy those items as well.