RibbonBar load and Save issus

I have created a really beautiful commandbar ribbon for my app using the designer.

After spending many days doing this, I thought being able to use it in my app would be easy and straight forward. But not. Here's what I am trying to do:

 

'Load the bar from designer file

(1) cmdBar.LoadDesignerBars App.Path & "\res\_Ribbon.xcb", Me

'This works beautifully. However, I don't want to distribute the designer file with my app...so using the other save and load features, I have converted the xcb file to xml, and even save in registry using

(2) cmdBar.SaveCommandBars App.CompanyName, "MyApp", "_RibbonLayout"

and

(3) cmdBar.SaveStateToXMLString("DesignerFile", myStateOptions)

' Then I try to load it in 2 different ways:

(4) cmdBar.LoadStateFromXMLString "DesignerFile", myXMLLayout, myStateOptions

OR cmdBar.LoadCommandBars App.CompanyName, "MyApp", "_RibbonLayout.

 

None of this works. It just wont load. If I load using the xcb file, it is fine. I can see data in both the XML and registry after the save. So what gives?

 

so my question:

How can I use the great ribbon that I created and saved as .xcb and .xml file in my app without loading it from the .xcb file all the time when my app is distributed? I want to load the .xcb file the first time, save the ribbon to either the registry and then install the registry at the client, then load from registry after that. I don't want to have to re-write the whole ribbon in code after spending all that time designing it. Very frustrating. Please help.