All,

The issue turned out to be a corrupted project object that builds the exe in the target application.  
Once I deleted and recreated the project object that builds the exe the issue was solved.

Thanks for all the responses.

Antohny

Hi Anthony;

   There are no differences between PB 2019R3 compiled Apps and PB2021 compiled Apps execution wise. The only thing that I can think of is that in your PB2021 project that creates the App EXE, that you selected in the "Security" tab under the "Execution Level" property a value other than "As Invoker".

Regards ... Chris

Thanks for the reply.  I checked all settings between 2019 and 2021 and both groups are the same including the one mentioned in your reply.  Both has execution level set to 'As Invoker'.  This is really strange as this is the first version (2021) of PowerBuilder where the .exe is created in such a way that the execution requires admin rights.  This 100% prevents us from deploying to production for the 10,000 clients we serve.

There were no changes made to client/server projects per the new features guide: https://docs.appeon.com/pb2021/whats_new/New_Features_2021.html

Please open a support ticket we try to help you troubleshoot, but I really think the issue is your environment/config.

did you sign your exe

Does your app try to write anything to the directory where it's installed? As a quick test, can you move the entire app folder into the user's documents folder to see if it will run there?

when you run the pb 2021  app what exactly happens?  does it pop up and ask for admin rights, does it disappear, does it blow up?

when you say the 2019 exe run, is this an exe that you building right now? or was this a build that was done a while ago? 

How do start execution of the PB 2021 app? Via a desktop shortcut?

If so, just for chuckles, right-click the shortcut, go to Properties, click the Advanced... button on the Shortcut tab. Is "Run as administrator" checked?

What if you navigate to the folder where the PB 2021 app resides in Windows Explorer, right-click on the exe and select Properties, select the Compatibility tab, is "Run this program as an administrator" checked?

How was the PB 2021 app compiled/deployed? With the new PBAutoBuild feature? Using a build script using Jenkins or similar and the pbc210.exe stand-alone compiler? Manually via the PB Project painter? Any difference in the way the PB 2019 app was compiled?