We recently had a ClickOnce deployment problem (minor disaster) with an application that requires Office Interop. After installing the update, some users received a dialog box informing them that the application couldn't run. Clicking the details button brought up a log file that included the error message “Value does not fall within the expected range” from the with a source of System.Deployment. The system event log contained multiple errors with a source of SideBySide. The error messages were of the form:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: SideBySide
Event Category: None
Event ID: 59
Description: Generate Activation
Context failed for C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings
\Temp\Deployment\8LGR3J15.XPN\J9929TC7.EY1\8P3T6N08.N67\BXEJQ4PZ.4J9.manifest.
Reference error message: The operation completed successfully.
After a lot of experimenting (and coffee), I found that Microsoft.Vbe.Interop.dll was set to a Publish Status of "Include" in the manifest. Setting it back to "Prerequisite (Auto)" resolved the problem.
My question is: What was the root cause? I get similar SideBySide event log entries even on a successful deployment.