You can run your application at any time by selecting either Start or Start Without Debugging from the Debug menu , or you can accomplish the same results by pressing either F5 or Ctrl-F5, respectively. You can also start the program by clicking the Start icon (▸) on the Standard toolbar.

For console applications , the advantage of running the program with Ctrl-F5 is that Visual Studio 2005 will open your application in a console window, display its results, and then add a line to press a key when you are ready, as shown in Figure 2-5. This keeps the window open until you’ve seen the results and pressed a key, at which point the window will close.

The program can be built (that is, the .exe and .dll files can be generated) by selecting a command under the Build menu . You have the option of building the entire solution or only the currently selected project.

Figure 2-5. Running the application