“Unable to find manifest signing certificate in the certificate store” - even when add new key

Marcus picture Marcus · Aug 14, 2012 · Viewed 147.3k times · Source

I cannot build projects with a strong name key signing - the message in the title always comes up.

Yes the project was initially copied over from another machine. However even if I add a new key via the Signing tab in Project Properties, this error is still shown.

I have tried running Visual Studio as an Administrator and have tried manually adding the keys to Windows Certificate Store.

Help!

Edit: I don't get this error with a new project, but I'd quite like to get this existing project working. It won't work even if I create a new certificate!

Answer

Marcus picture Marcus · Aug 26, 2012

I've finally found the solution and really hope this helps someone else too.

  1. Edit the .csproj file for the project in question.
  2. Delete the following lines of code:

    <PropertyGroup>
       <ManifestCertificateThumbprint>...........</ManifestCertificateThumbprint>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <PropertyGroup>
       <ManifestKeyFile>xxxxxxxx.pfx</ManifestKeyFile>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <PropertyGroup>
       <GenerateManifests>true</GenerateManifests>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <PropertyGroup>
       <SignManifests>false</SignManifests>
    </PropertyGroup>