Here is a very simple code snippet for converting a Byte Array to a String in VB.Net

Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes)

And here is a function for that uses it to convert a byte array to a string

    
    Private Function streamToString(ByVal stream As System.IO.MemoryStream) As String
        Dim o As New IO.StreamWriter(stream, System.Text.Encoding.Default)
        Dim bytes(stream.Length - 1) As Byte
        stream.Read(bytes, 0, stream.Length - 1)
        Return Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytes)
    End Function