I finally have my vb app working the way I want it to when I run it in debug mode in visual studio express. But when I publish it to a regular .exe app using OneClick, it gets caught in an endless loop.

When it runs properly (debugging through visual studio):

STEP1: App launches input window form
STEP2: User enters input into form and hits go button
STEP3: App launches external process 1 and sends it user's input from form
STEP4: App launches external process 2 (which accesses process 1 data)
STEP5: App reads a log file to determine status of process 2
STEP6: App launches external process 3 based on data from log file
-- App waits while user sends input to process 3 --
STEP7: When user exits Process 3, app kills processes 1 & 2 and then quits

Here's how the published .exe build runs:

STEP1: App launches input window form
STEP2: User enters input into form and hits go button
STEP3: App launches external process 1 and sends it user's input from form
STEP4: App launches external process 2 (which accesses process 1 data)
STEP5: App reads a log file to determine status of process 2
STEP6: App launches external process 3 based on data from log file
-- App loops back to STEP 3 repeatedly, launching numerous additional instances of processes 1, 2 and 3 (before I force quit the app)

I then also have to manually force quit each of the additional instances of the external processes (the first time around 50 additional instances).

I'm new to vb.net coding, and this is the first time I've ever "published" an app -- is this a common problem? I've done several searches and looked through the various books I have, but I can't find anything about this.

Is there something I need to change in the publishing options? Or is this some kind of "threading" issue as to the external processes I'm launching?

I imagine it must be pretty common for a published build to run a little differently than the debugging version of the app running through visual studio -- but this is completely different behavior, and because it is running as a standalone .exe, I can't "step" through it to see why it is looping this way...

Any help would be appreciated, and thanks in advance.