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.

53 comments:

hlorofils said...

Thank you,- it worked

Anonymous said...

thanks. Same problem. Worked like a champ.

Sometimes experiments run amok can be the worst bugs.

Anonymous said...

This worked like a champ, thanks

Jason said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Rohan West said...

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

Anonymous said...

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!

Anonymous said...

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!

Anonymous said...

Worked like a charm :)

Anonymous said...

It's great. thanks a lot

Anonymous said...

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

manmonth said...

Thanks..it helps.

vitinho said...

Great! Worked fine.. thanks a lot

Unknown said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

habita73 said...

merci .. bocoup! و شكرا

Unknown said...

excelent, is it working. thank

Anonymous said...

Cheer fellah, worked a treat.

Shikha said...

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

Mark J (UK) said...

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.

Unknown said...

Thanks from me too!
-Mike

sweetu said...

thanks it really works

dosskull said...

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 !"

Anonymous said...

Awesome!!

Anonymous said...

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

Manfred Lange said...

@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.

Anonymous said...

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.

Adiboy said...

Thanks it worked for me.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot. It saved lot of time.

Anonymous said...

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!

Anonymous said...

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

Manfred Lange said...

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

Anonymous said...

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

Manfred Lange said...

@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.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot...it worked great..

Anonymous said...

Thanks it worked

S.F. Sahiwala said...

Big Thanks ...

Anonymous said...

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

Sujit Kumar said...

Thanks to this advice !!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks, that was a nice one!

zeeshan143 said...

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

Anonymous said...

great! it works! thank you very much!

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

Thanks it worked.

Anonymous said...

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

Anonymous said...

Nice to know that this still works for VS 2013!

doapanda said...

thankyou it work

Kalpya said...

thanks problem solved.

raj.suhan.exe said...

Thanks Mate you saved my day T_T

Unknown said...

GENIUS :D awesomeness

Anonymous said...

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

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