Failing to publish a Windows Forms project

Question

I am trying to click on the project and publish it. But what I get is this:

Error 94  An error occurred while signing: Failed to sign
bin\Debug\app.publish\setup.exe. SignTool Error: The signer's certificate is not valid for signing. SignTool Error: An error occurred while attempting to sign: bin\Debug\app.publish\setup.exe CHATT3R

What does it mean?

From the error message it looks like that the "signer's certificate is not valid for signing.", make sure certificate is valid. — Jethro, Aug 19 '11 at 17:11
How will I make so??!? it creates a temp certificate to my project, but I dont know what it does — Dmitry Makovetskiyd, Aug 19 '11 at 17:12
First search hit: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vbgeneral/thread/ea9c799e-719e-4a0b-b89b-ed1abb89c45b/ — Hans Passant, Aug 19 '11 at 18:14

score 60 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 12 '11 at 13:38

60

I had this problem. It turns out the certificate had expired (useful error message - thanks Microsoft)

If you go to the Signing page in the project properties you can see the expiry date, and create a new test certificate if required.

answered Oct 12 '11 at 13:38

Darren

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This worked for me too - but had to restart Visual Studio first though. – CYMR0 May 02 '17 at 09:36

score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 30 '19 at 17:15

6

Go to Signing page in the project properties and Uncheck Sign The ClickOnce manifests.

Please see screenshot

edited Oct 30 '19 at 17:15

Unihedron

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answered Oct 30 '19 at 14:23

AliSafder

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I don't think this is a useful suggestion to not sign manifest... – Prokurors May 03 '20 at 15:36

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 27 '20 at 01:07

4

In my case, I just did:

Right-click on your project.
Choose Settings.
Go to Signing page in.
Untick "Sign the ClickOnce manifests".

Done.

answered Jul 27 '20 at 01:07

Shamal Sabah

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 03 '20 at 15:35

I had also problem problem with signing with an error error MSB3482: An error occurred while signing: Failed to sign bin\Debug\app.publish\....exe. SignTool Error: An unexpected internal error has occurred the interesting thing was that my certificate was not expired.

In my case problem was with Timestamp server URL - don't know why, but the previously provided URL by some reason was not working anymore (maybe some temporary unavailability?)

Switched it to different Timestamp server URL and signing was working again

The Timestamp server URL which was not working http://tsa.starfieldtech.com

The Timestamp server URL I replaced it with was http://timestamp.globalsign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll

just had this same issue - changed timestamp server URL to the previous one - and problem with signing was gone — Prokurors, Apr 10 '21 at 10:17

Failing to publish a Windows Forms project

4 Answers4