how Run an exe from resources in VB .NET

Question

_{Wednesday, January 24, 2018 1:02 PM}

how Run an exe from resources in memorystream VB .NET

All replies (3)

_{Wednesday, January 24, 2018 1:36 PM ✅Answered}

You are better off extracting the executable from resource and use Process.Run. Otherwise you would need something like the following which may or may not work dependent on the executable e.g. was it built in Visual Studio or not.

Imports System.IO
Public Class Demo
    Public Shared Sub RunSearch(ByVal pPath As String, ByVal pText As String)
        'Get the current assembly
        Dim assembly As Reflection.Assembly = Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()

        'Get the resource stream
        Dim resourceStream As Stream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("path.executable name")

        'Verify the internal exe exists
        If resourceStream Is Nothing Then
            Return
        End If

        'Read the raw bytes of the resource
        Dim resourcesBuffer(CInt(resourceStream.Length) - 1) As Byte

        resourceStream.Read(resourcesBuffer, 0, resourcesBuffer.Length)
        resourceStream.Close()

        'Load the bytes as an assembly
        Dim exeAssembly As Reflection.Assembly = Reflection.Assembly.Load(resourcesBuffer)
        Dim args() As String = {pPath, pText}
        Dim parameters = New Object() {args}
        Try
            exeAssembly.EntryPoint.Invoke(Nothing, parameters)
        Catch
            '
            ' Handle exception
            '
        End Try
    End Sub
End Class

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VB Forums - moderator

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_{Wednesday, January 24, 2018 1:29 PM}

You cannot, a resource is an inclusion in an Exe. 

This was in past a short while used to copy programs from others and wrapped that inside an own program and then sell it as an own program.

But it was only short that was possible. 

Be aware that an .Net assembly is not direct a native executable. It only contains the .Net ILS code to be executed by the .Net framework runtime 

Success Cor

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_{Wednesday, January 24, 2018 2:37 PM}

There is no point. First, the executable would need to be extracted and written as a file before it could be executed. Second, you would probably need to write it somewhere other than Program Files, which is protected by UAC. Third, some security software might consider it to be malware or a virus and block the operation.

Unless you are creating an installer application I would abandon this idea and simply include the executable as just another file in your application.

Paul ~~~~ Microsoft MVP (Visual Basic)