No geometry drawn when starting without debugging

Question

I'm at a point in my project where I need to use the EXE file that is generated but noticed there is no geometry drawn (only text and background color) when running it from the folder (all textures, dll's and other dependencies are correctly placed).

I couldn't find much through online searching but it did help me narrow it down slightly. Basically when I hit F5 as normal to start with debugging I get this - http://imgur.com/DcSgseC (everything is as it should be). However, when I start without the debugger I just get this - http://imgur.com/EybzlKd It would make sense that this would be similar to what the compiled EXE displays.

So, how could starting without the debugger cause geometry to not be drawn?

Any help is really appreciated.

Answer 1

I can think of two things causing this:

1. Use of #ifdef _DEBUG somewhere in your code.
2. Relying on uninitialized variables, which may get initialized to 0 in debug mode, but have random values in release mode.

This SO question may also be of some help: Differences between running an executable with Visual Studio debugger vs without debugger