Strong name validation failed ... only on one person's computer!

[Kevin]

Hi all,

I have a VB.NET application distributed to all employees in our
company, and only one person's PC is having problems with it. After a
restart of her computer, the next time she runs my app she gets the
message:

.....exe - Strong name validation failed.
Strong name validation failed for assembly '...'. The file may have
been tampered with or it was partially signed but not fully signed with
the correct private key.

If we uninstalled and reinstalled the msi, the app would run fine for
the rest of the day, until she restarted and tried again in the
morning. One thing I noticed today (when the program was giving the
error) was the exe's file size on her computer was different than on
mine, but when I copied her exe to a network drive so I could bring it
back to my computer and look into it, the file size became the same as
on my computer, and when I compared the files they were identical. I
replaced the exe on her computer with the one on mine and the program
runs fine, so I think it is safe to say the problem is isolated in the
executable, and does not have to do with any of the dll's in the GAC.

Any ideas of what's wrong or what to look into next would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks!
Kevin

 

[almscl2]

Two things

- Mutating executables can be a sign of an infected system with virus.
- Although not an elegant solution, you can turn off verfication of the
signature on that specific pc using the following command:

sn -Vr myAssembly.dll

-Al
WireFactor Software Ltd.
http://www.wirefactor.com