An error occurred while signing

Question

I maintain a large WPF application which I inherited from another developer. I use ClickOnce to publish it. Suddenly, today I got an error message: Error 2 Cannot publish because a project failed to build. 1 1
Error 3 An error occurred while signing: Failed to sign bin\Debug\app.publish\setup.exe. SignTool Error: No certificates were found that met all the given criteria.

I do have a file called SomeName.snk, which is referred in project settings, Signing tab. I have no idea what happened today that caused the problem. I use VS 2012.

Answer 1

Go to main project properties > Signing > If the expiration date is over > click on Create Test Certificate, password is not mandatory, and you're done.

Answer 2

I'd check whether the certificate expired. Most (all?) certs have an expiration date.

Answer 3

I got this problem installing visual c++ on top of a VS2017 .net install. I solved it by unchecking Properties -> Security -> Enable ClickOnce security settings.

It then created an app.manifest file. After that the error went away. Interestingly enough, I checked it again to see what would happen and the problem did not come back.

Answer 4

Did you check for the certificate?

View or manage your certificates

You can use the MMC Snap In or Internet Explorer.