Clickonce Renew Certificate WPF Desktop .Net 4.5.2 Framework Application

Anonymous
2021-08-08T20:32:59.297+00:00

Our Application is Desktop WPF based .Net Framework (4.5.2) APP and it's been in Production for long time. We do Deployments as Clickonce package and user gets auto updates through it.

Problem:
The initial certificate which was used to sign the Clickonce package, was expired sometimes ago. But instead of adding a new certificate, we extended the initial certificate and until now using that.
But now with Windows 10 we are getting an "Unknown Publisher" while getting updates and sometimes it is blocked and preventing installing completely.

Action:
So we are going to add a new certificate and publish the Clickonce package. But not sure, then user might not be able to get the updates or user has to uninstall and install the app again or user will loose previous version's Settings (user) data.

Question:
Since our App is .Net 4.5.2 app,
Do we need to take any extra actions to avoid all those possible errors
Or has this topic already been resolved for above .Net version
Hence we just need to add/sign the new certificate into Clickonce package and publish it?

Thank you.

Developer technologies | Windows Presentation Foundation
Developer technologies | .NET | .NET Runtime

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  1. Hui Liu-MSFT 48,721 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff
    2021-08-09T09:50:48.69+00:00

    It is necessary for you to set the correct ,net framework version if you want to renew the certificate.
    It also depends on if you use automatic update or program update and whether it is a test certificate or a certificate provider. For more details, you could refer to Certificate Expiration in ClickOnce Deployment and ClickOnce and Authenticode.
    If your customers have to uninstall and reinstall manually, they will lose any data that you might be storing in the ClickOnce DataDirectory. In the uninstall/reinstall application, you can move the data, and in the new version, you can find the data in a new location. You could see the details here.

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