clickonce deployment

[Charles Crawford]

Hi,

I've been trying to get the clickonce deployment to work correctly ever
since I got VS2005Pro.

I'm trying to deploy via our Intranet and therefore do not feel the need to
donate $495 per year to Verisign or some other money grubbing entity just to
get a code signing certificate. Is there a way to deploy an application with
ClickOnce without needing to purchase a certificate? I've tried the test
certificate feature, but it still craps out when publishing saying that it's
unable to find a valid certificate.

Please help...

Thanks,

Charlie

 

[Linda Liu [MSFT]]

Hi Charles,

When we publish an application via ClickOnce, we must use a cerificate to
sign the ClickOnce manifests. For the first time to publish the
application, VS IDE will generate a certificate file automatically. You may
also create a test certificate by yourself.

Open the Project Designer(right-click on the project node in the Solution
Explorer and choose Properties) and switch to Signing tab. Click on the
'Create Test Certificate' button on the right hand. In the 'Create Test
Certificate' dialog, enter a password twice and press OK button. VS IDE
will use the new certificate file to sign the ClickOnce manifest. If you
click the 'More Details' button, a Certificate dialog appears and you could
see the information of the certificate file in the dialog.

Hope this helps.


Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

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[Charles Crawford]

Hi Linda,

I did exactly that and it still says it can't find a valid certificate.

I'll try again in a moment, but first I want to follow your instructions
regarding the page breaks in the report.

Thanks for your assistance.

Charlie

 

[Charles Crawford]

Linda,

Just as I had mentioned in my original post, the temporary certificate
failed to provide the publishing wizard or process what it was looking for.

The project build goes fine. It asks me for the password for the certificate
(mhInspector_TemporaryKey.pfx) three times. The status strip message says
'build succeeded', but in the Error List, two errors are reported:

1) Cannot publish because a project failed to build.
2) The signing certificate could not be located. Ensure that it is in the
current user's personal store.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's something else wrong with my computer,
since everything I see on the web and what you are telling me should happen,
do not coincide with what's actually occurring on my machine.

Any further advice on how to diagnose this problem would be very much
appreciated.

Thanks again,

Charlie

 

[Linda Liu [MSFT]]

Hi Charles,

It seems that the certificate file isn't added to your personal certificate
store. You may open the Project Designer and switch to the Signing tab and
click the 'Select from Store' button. In the 'Select a Certificate' dialog,
you could see if the certificate file exists in the list box.

If the certificate file doesn't exist in the list box, you may have a try
adding it manually. To do this, run the .Net 2.0 SDK Command Prompt(from
Start menu, go to VS .NET 2005, Mircosoft .NET Framework SDK 2.0, SDK
Command Prompt), and type the command 'certmgr.exe' to open the Certificate
manage dialog. In the dialog, select the 'Personal' tab and click the
'Import' button to add a certificate file(if you generate a test
certificate file, it resides in your project's directory).

Hope this helps.


Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

 

[Andy]

Install Certificate Authority (it comes as part of windows server 2003,
possibly server 200) as a stand alone server somewhere on your network.
You can use CA to create the cert, and also push it to all your
clients internally.

HTH
Andy

 

[Guest]

Andy et al.,
I'm trying to do exactly what you suggest, but cannot seem to get it to
work. I hope you can help.
I have installed Certificate Server on a Win2003 box and seem to be able to
generate certificates. I can export a certificate as a pfx file and sign a
click-once app with it, but on install, it still shows "unknown publisher" in
the nag message. I'm pretty sure the problem is with how I'm generating the
certificate.

I'm fairly new to this and it has been a struggle. Any help would be
appreciated.

Barry

 

[Guest]

Andy et al.,
I'm trying to do exactly what you suggest, but cannot seem to get it to
work. I hope you can help.
I have installed Certificate Server on a Win2003 box and seem to be able to
generate certificates. I can export a certificate as a pfx file and sign a
click-once app with it, but on install, it still shows "unknown publisher" in
the nag message. I'm pretty sure the problem is with how I'm generating the
certificate.

I'm fairly new to this and it has been a struggle. Any help would be
appreciated.

Barry

 

[Guest]

Andy et al.,
I'm trying to do exactly what you suggest, but cannot seem to get it to
work. I hope you can help.
I have installed Certificate Server on a Win2003 box and seem to be able to
generate certificates. I can export a certificate as a pfx file and sign a
click-once app with it, but on install, it still shows "unknown publisher" in
the nag message. I'm pretty sure the problem is with how I'm generating the
certificate.

I'm fairly new to this and it has been a struggle. Any help would be
appreciated.

Barry