Thursday, March 13, 2008

Visual Studio: "Unable to find manifest signing certificate in the certificate store"

I just moved a Visual Studio project from one computer to a different one. When I then tried to rebuild the solution I received the following error:
"Unable to find manifest signing certificate in the certificate store"
As I was sure that I wasn't using any certificate to sign the assembly I couldn't understand the reason for this error message and the integrated help system for Visual Studio wasn't a big help either. It turned out that I had to manually go into the *.csproj file and remove the following three lines that were apparently left over from some past experiments with signing using a certificate:
<manifestcertificatethumbprint>...</manifestcertificatethumbprint> <manifestkeyfile>...</manifestkeyfile> <generatemanifests>...</generatemanifests> <signmanifests>...</signmanifests>
After I had removed those lines I reloaded the project and the solution rebuilt just fine. There is more information on this subject at a Microsoft Forum.
at

53 comments:

  1. hlorofils3:01 AM

    Thank you,- it worked

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous6:42 AM

    thanks. Same problem. Worked like a champ.

    Sometimes experiments run amok can be the worst bugs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:11 AM

    This worked like a champ, thanks

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jason9:51 AM

    Holy crap dude.. I looked everywhere for this. 2 hours I've been searching online. Even read that msdn thread you referenced.. But your suggestion worked. Thanks!
    -Jason, TX

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous8:58 AM

    Just re-loaded a console app that I haven't looked at in 18 mos or so and the first attempt at compiling it generated this error. Your Suggested fix got me back on track. Thanks. --Brett

    ReplyDelete
  6. Rohan West10:02 AM

    Very useful, this worked for me too. Not sure what caused this to happen, I haven't been using any certificates in this project.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous8:04 PM

    I had this problem happen when moving a solution to another computer and converting from VS2005 to 2008.

    Not sure why this happened but the fix worked for me too.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous8:05 PM

    I had this problem happen when moving a solution to another computer and converting from VS2005 to 2008.

    Not sure why this happened but the fix worked for me too.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous2:23 AM

    Worked like a charm :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous4:54 PM

    It's great. thanks a lot

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous5:24 AM

    Thank you. That saved me a heck of a lot of debugging time.

    ReplyDelete
  12. manmonth3:12 PM

    Thanks..it helps.

    ReplyDelete
  13. vitinho1:33 PM

    Great! Worked fine.. thanks a lot

    ReplyDelete
  14. Unknown10:50 AM

    Thanks, I just ran into this problem and this fixed it.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous8:11 PM

    Nice, that was a little hard to find out on my own. Thanks a lot. Great solution!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous12:27 AM

    Thanks a lot. I have been struggling with this since yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Anonymous4:38 AM

    Works with VB.net projects too in .vbproj obviously.

    ReplyDelete
  18. habita7312:27 AM

    merci .. bocoup! و شكرا

    ReplyDelete
  19. Unknown5:57 AM

    excelent, is it working. thank

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous10:34 PM

    Cheer fellah, worked a treat.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Shikha12:04 AM

    It was very helpful for me!!!! :p I wonder why changing the properties from the properties page remove such tags. Grrrrrrrrrrrr

    ReplyDelete
  22. Mark J (UK)4:00 AM

    Thanks very much....just migrated over to a new laptop and couldn't get my project to compile. Solved the problem in seconds after finding your solution on Google.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous8:29 AM

    Thanks from me too!
    -Mike

    ReplyDelete
  24. sweetu12:50 AM

    thanks it really works

    ReplyDelete
  25. dosskull5:41 PM

    you more genius than people in MSDN Forum i can't find the answer in MSDN Forum but i find the answer in this blog, "GOOD JOB MAN !"

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous5:09 PM

    Awesome!!

    ReplyDelete
  27. Anonymous6:26 PM

    i cant fing cproj file in my vs2008 desktop application.... :(
    plz help me...

    ReplyDelete
  28. Manfred Lange11:28 AM

    @Anonymous: The csproj file is not directly visible in the solution explorer. You have two options: 1) you unload the project from the solution, then pick "Edit ....csproj" from the context menu. 2) you can use Windows Explorer and locate the file on the disk, then edit it using notepad.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Anonymous10:25 AM

    Thanks! This happened to me after upgrading a project from VS2008 to VS2010. Edited the .csproj file using notepad in the filesystem, then reloaded the project and it built just fine.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Adiboy12:04 PM

    Thanks it worked for me.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous7:56 PM

    Thanks a lot. It saved lot of time.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous5:26 AM

    Worked for me :)
    Thank god I found this :)
    I forgot to delete 1 Line when I tried to figure out on my own, then i saw the 4th line here!

    thx!

    ReplyDelete
  33. Anonymous1:15 PM

    this worsk
    http://blog.ninethsense.com/unable-to-find-manifest-signing-certificate-in-the-certificate-store/

    ReplyDelete
  34. Manfred Lange7:09 AM

    @Anonymous Yes, that helps in some cases. Thank you for the link.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Anonymous3:27 AM

    I didn't find nothing with this extension: *.csproj
    How can i find it? I have the same problem.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Manfred Lange11:50 AM

    @Anonymous: If you can't find a file with the extension "csproj" chances are you are not using C# ...

    I didn't assess whether this blog post applies to other languages as well.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Anonymous8:09 PM

    Thanks a lot...it worked great..

    ReplyDelete
  38. Anonymous9:46 PM

    Thanks it worked

    ReplyDelete
  39. S.F. Sahiwala12:24 AM

    Big Thanks ...

    ReplyDelete
  40. Anonymous12:13 AM

    Gr8 man.. u solved ma problem also..
    Perfect solution..

    ReplyDelete
  41. Sujit Kumar11:54 PM

    Thanks to this advice !!!

    ReplyDelete
  42. Anonymous3:24 AM

    Thanks, that was a nice one!

    ReplyDelete
  43. zeeshan1436:48 PM

    open project properties>siginig tab> and uncheck the signin click once manifests

    ReplyDelete
  44. Anonymous8:39 PM

    great! it works! thank you very much!

    ReplyDelete
  45. Anonymous1:36 AM

    In my .csproj file there are no that type of lines .. plz someone help me

    ReplyDelete
  46. Anonymous11:51 PM

    Thanks it worked.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Anonymous3:23 AM

    thanks.. works.. on a VS2010 C# project...

    ReplyDelete
  48. Anonymous8:09 AM

    Nice to know that this still works for VS 2013!

    ReplyDelete
  49. doapanda7:17 PM

    thankyou it work

    ReplyDelete
  50. Kalpya11:39 PM

    thanks problem solved.

    ReplyDelete
  51. raj.suhan.exe5:25 AM

    Thanks Mate you saved my day T_T

    ReplyDelete
  52. Unknown2:06 PM

    GENIUS :D awesomeness

    ReplyDelete
  53. Anonymous11:42 PM

    I just used this as reference and created a blank one.

    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4517440/why-am-i-getting-unable-to-find-manifest-signing-certificate-in-the-certificate

    ReplyDelete

All comments, questions and other feedback is much appreciated. Thank you!