In Visual Studio 2012 where does ClickOnce “Publish” expect to find the .Net 4 client profile?

Question

The Publish feature stopped working once I installed Visual Studio 2012. Publish cannot find the prerequisite Microsoft .Net Framework 4 Client Profile (x86 and x64)

Answer 1

I'm answering my own question. The problem went away when I used a different .Net 4 Client setup program. The exe that works for me is dotNetFx40_Client_x86_x64.exe found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24872

The wrong setup program is dotNetFx40_Client_setup.exe which I was led to by following the Microsoft MSDN help topic How to: Include Prerequisites with a ClickOnce Application (Visual Studio 2012) which led me to this link to the setup. I use Chrome which downloaded the web installer which I didn't realize was not the file I needed. Had I been using IE none of this would have happened. I was clued into the problem by this StackOverflow question which suggests renaming the setup program. Instead of renaming it I just downloaded the correct one.

Answer 2

re: Windows installer: VS2012 doesn't include the same prerequisites as VS2010, but you can copy the package from the previous SDK folders to the new one, and it will magically show up in the prerequisite list in VS2012 and work!