Visual Studio 2008 SignTool.exe not found

Question

I can't publish in 2008, I was previously using 2005 and it published just fine.

Error 2 An error occurred while signing: SignTool.exe not found.

I know there are tons of hits for a search on signtool.exe on google. The ones I've found involve copying the file to X,Y,Z locations and ensuring signtool matches up with your VS command prompt path.

When I run my start-> program files -> visual studio 2008 -> Visual Studio Tools -> Visual Studio Command prompt. and type signtool.exe it finds the file just fine.

I have Visual Studio 2005 professional edition, Visual studio 2008 profession edition, Visual studio 2005 SDK February 2007, just installed Visial Studio 2008 SDK1.1 to see if that would fix it, no luck.

I have copied signtool.exe to lots of places that were suggested on the google searches, it is now located at all of the following:

C:\Program Files\Visual Studio 2005 SDK\2007.02
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VB\Bin
C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bin
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools\Bin
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\SDK\v3.5\Bin
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VB\Bin\1033
C:\Program Files\Visual Studio 2005 SDK\2007.02\VisualStudioIntegration\Tools\Bin

I'm on windows XP

2009-06-12 update I can only publish if I copy signtool.exe to the project folder I'm publishing now.

Answer 1

Not a direct answer but I was curious why you're not just right-clicking your project in Visual Studio for properties and then going to the "Signing" tab?

Answer 2

This may help some one else.... I got round this problem by going to the signing tab and unchecking the Sign The ClickOnce Manifests option and now it works...

I guess that doesn't FIX the problem..but it gets around it allowing you to publish your application with out the Signtool.exe File.

Answer 3

Replace signtool with "$(FrameworkSDKDir)bin\signtool" with the quotes and see if it works. It tried this now on Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition.

N.B: I have been using same command on VS 2005 for signing the binaries.

Answer 4

This may help some one else.... I got round this problem by going to the signing tab and unchecking the Sign The ClickOnce Manifests option and now it works...

that one doesn't worke for me, because every time I uncheck the signing (and save the config) Visual Studio checks it back on.