What is different between visual studio F5, ctrl+F5, or running outside of visual studio?-Collection of common programming errors
Running ctrl + F5 will run the application without debugger. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/8b59xk0f(v=vs.90).aspx) This is not the same as running in release mode.
You can run your application in debug mode but without debugger. It sounds stupid but is for example helpful if you want to stop the console from closing on exit. (How to stop console from closing on exit?)