Originally Posted by Daved
VC++ .Net is one of the most standards-compliant compilers available, so if you write portable, standards-compliant code on it then your code will be portable. It just adds a lot of extra stuff that you have to learn how to skip or ignore.
Usually Ctrl-F5 executes the program and F5 debugs it, so are you sure you are getting that error message when you hit Ctrl-F5?
Where is the folder the executable is output to? You can find this information by looking in the project properties, under Linker there should be an Output File property that has a path. That is the path to look for when you look for the executable. If the executable is not there, then did your build finish?
Maybe you are compiling the file but not building the project. After you compile you must link to create the exe, and building does this automatically . To build you go to the Build menu and hit Build Solution (F7 for me). What does the output window say after your build? Hopefully something like this: "Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped".
Chances are one of those steps is going wrong.