I cant seem to find where I would change my visual basic 2005 project into a release build. I'm so embarrased.

Uh oh ... well, let me go ahead and tell you what you knew was already coming....you need to work through source control!!!!  There are so many benefits to using source control that it is hard to find a starting point.  We highly recommend Team Foundation server, but even Source Safe is dramatically better than nothing at all!!!

OK...so next, is source code on a network or local drive?  The problem you are running into sounds like residual environment settings hanging around.  Source control would help resolve this issue.  Also, you should really never work off of a network drive.  I know that you can adjust the machine trusts and policies to allow this to run, but I HIGHLY recommend not doing this.