Add bitmap to resource - arrays

Question

I am trying to add compressed bitmap as resource of another executable, but got stuck to an error. The error is:
Value of type 'System.Drawing.Bitmap' cannot be converted to '1-dimensional array of System.Drawing.Bitmap'
Here's my pseudo code:
Module1:
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices
Module ResourceWriter
Private Function ToPtr(ByVal data As Object) As IntPtr
Dim h As GCHandle = GCHandle.Alloc(data, GCHandleType.Pinned)
Dim ptr As IntPtr
Try
ptr = h.AddrOfPinnedObject()
Finally
h.Free()
End Try
Return ptr
End Function
<DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError:=True)> _
Private Function UpdateResource(ByVal hUpdate As IntPtr, ByVal lpType As String, ByVal lpName As String, ByVal wLanguage As UShort, ByVal lpData As IntPtr, ByVal cbData As UInteger) As Boolean
End Function
<DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError:=True)> _
Private Function BeginUpdateResource(ByVal pFileName As String, <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)> ByVal bDeleteExistingResources As Boolean) As IntPtr
End Function
<DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError:=True)> _
Private Function EndUpdateResource(ByVal hUpdate As IntPtr, ByVal fDiscard As Boolean) As Boolean
End Function
Public Function WriteResource(ByVal filename As String, ByVal bmp As Bitmap()) As Boolean
Try
Dim handle As IntPtr = BeginUpdateResource(filename, False)
Dim file1 As Bitmap() = bmp
Dim fileptr As IntPtr = ToPtr(file1)
Dim res As Boolean = UpdateResource(handle, "BitMaps", "0", 0, fileptr, Convert.ToUInt32(file1.Length))
EndUpdateResource(handle, False)
Catch ex As Exception
Return False
End Try
Return True
End Function
End Module
In form, under button:
'...here's code to compress the image, commented out for now
Dim bmp1 As Bitmap = Compressed
WriteResource("C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\Testfile.exe", bmp1)
But it doesn't work. What changes I should make to the module, or to the code under button? I see I should convert System.Drawing.Bitmap to 1-dimensional array before putting the image into the resources, but how?
Any help is much appreciated :)
Edit:
I have now tried all answers I found from google & MSDN, and I cannot figure it out. So if anyone could just show how to do it, I would really appreciate it..
Here's one of the methods I tried.
Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
'...
Dim bmp1 As Bitmap = Compressed
Dim Converted = ConvertToByteArray(bmp1)
WriteResource("C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\Testfile.exe", Converted)
End Sub
Public Shared Function ConvertToByteArray(ByVal value As Bitmap) As Byte()
Dim bitmapBytes As Byte()
Using stream As New System.IO.MemoryStream
value.Save(stream, value.RawFormat)
bitmapBytes = stream.ToArray
End Using
Return bitmapBytes
End Function
And yes, I changed the Bitmap() to Byte() at Module1; but it returned "Value cannot be NULL" in runtime.
I also tried to save it as IO.MemoryStream and then convert to bytes but didn't success.
So if anyone could show me how to do this, that would be really great.

Answer 1

You declared the parameter as a Bitmap array by putting () after the type name here:
Public Function WriteResource(ByVal filename As String, ByVal bmp As Bitmap()) As Boolean
If you don't want it to be an array, remove the ():
Public Function WriteResource(ByVal filename As String, ByVal bmp As Bitmap) As Boolean

Answer 2

The first problem you have is well covered in Ryan's answer (Dim file1 As Bitmap() = bmp is wrong too); the second is that you are covering up a different problem.
If you refer to UpdateResource on MSDN you'll see that cbdata is the number of bytes to write, that is the byte count of the bitmap. Your code is passing the size of the array. Further, lpData is supposed to be a long pointer to the data and also "Note that this is the raw binary data to be stored". You cannot just pass a bitmap as you are trying to do.
The bitmap class's save method will let you save to a memorystream from which the bytes AND BYTE COUNT can be gotten and fed to UpdateResource.