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SkyRaign10's avatar
SkyRaign10
Copper Contributor
Nov 04, 2026

C# .NET Framework 4.8 -> .NET 9

So, I recently realized that I had been building my project off of the outdated .NET Framework 4.8.  I recently decided to dig into it and update it to as far as my IDE (VS 2022) allows ... .NET 9 fo...
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Jamony's avatar
Jamony
MCT
Nov 05, 2026

A framework-dependent .NET application normally needs more than the EXE. Its publish output includes the application DLL, dependencies and runtime configuration; copying only the executable can leave the target without the information or assemblies needed to launch.

 

In Visual Studio, publish to a folder with Deployment Mode set to Framework-dependent and Target Runtime set to win-x64. Copy that complete publish folder to the Windows 10 computer. The equivalent command is dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained false.

 

On the target, use dotnet --list-runtimes, not --list-frameworks. If this is WinForms or WPF, check specifically for Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 9.x of the correct architecture; the base runtime alone is insufficient. Run the deployed app from a terminal and preserve the exact error if it still fails. A self-contained build working is consistent with missing runtime/deployment dependencies, but does not identify which one without that error.