how can I make a stand-alone exe in Visual Studio. Its just a simple Console application that I think users would not like to install a tiny Console application. I compiled a simple cpp file using the visual studio command prompt. Will the exe work even if the .NET framework is not installed? I used native C++ code.
Anything using the managed environment (which includes anything written in C# and VB.NET) requires the .NET framework. You can simply redistribute your .EXE in that scenario, but they'll need to install the appropriate framework if they don't already have it.