VB 2005 Install Gives Error, along with other problems

[David C. Barber]

I've just built my first Setup-Installable VB 2005 package. I have the full
Profession Edition VS 2005, not the Express edition, and am patched to the
current SP. It installs on the development machine (Win 2K) and runs just
as well as it does in the VS IDE. I used the Walkthrough for Deploying a
Windows-based Application in the MSDN files supplied. This application
accesses Active Directory in several ways, including using ADODC to make a
database-like LDAP call.

However, when I install it on a new XP Pro machine and run it, two problems:

1: The install is supposed to create a desktop shortcut according to the
steps I performed in the Walkthrough. Doesn't happen. Nor can I find it in
the Programs list. I have to go directly to \Program Files\<program
locationand click on the .EXE file to execute it.

2: When I execute the program the form comes up fine. However, when I
attempt the access of the LDAP information I get the following error:
---
Unhandled exception has occurred in your application. If you click
Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue.
If you click Quit, the application will close immediately.

Could not load file or assembly 'ADODB, Version=7.0.330 0.0, Culture=neutral ,
PublicKeyToken= b03f5f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system
cannot find the file specified.
---

Why am I not getting either my shortcut, and more importantly, whatever
included items I need to complete a successful install? I would have
thought that any missing items would have been flagged at build time.

Also, when I installed/uninstalled under Windows 2K, it gave me the
following 2 not nice surprises:

1: It reset the All Users path in the registry to Start Programs to point
to: \WINNT\Profiles \All Users\Start Menu\Program, which is d@mm unuseful
when the All Users Programs is located in Documents & Settings. That took a
good bit of hunting down to get my Start Programs menu showing all my
installed programs once more.

2: It unregistered activeds.tlb, which I use for Active Directory
information retrieval. I didn't even know there was a REGTLIB.EXE program
for manually re-registering library files in the same way that REGSVR32 is
used for DLL's and OCX's until today. That knowledge didn't come easily,
either. And that's only what I've discovered so far that 2005 messes up.

Thanks!