“Manifest XML signature is not valid” on client machine but works fine on developer computer

Question

At work we had a ClickOnce application that, when the client would try to install, was throwing the exception:

• Exception reading manifest f

Answer 1

We also faced similar issue in following scenario.

We simply migrated from vs2008 to vs2013-update 5.

Our clickonce app is on .net 3.5.

After this, our clickonce app build using nant script on command prompt was giving same error "Manifest XML signature is not valid" on a machine which is having .net framework version older than 4.5.

As we were using vs2013-update 5, it was obviously not related to fix done in vs2013-update 3.

After doing trial and error on one sample app, we sorted it out that mage.exe which we are using to resign the manifest after updating manifest. When we create setup using VS2013 developer command prompt, it uses mage.exe which is installed with VS2013 and it is not having the same fix which is done in VS2013 update 3. Using old mage.exe, installed with vs2008 (normally located at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin") solved our problem.