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Internal Manifest vs External Manifest

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Internal manifest is the RT_MANIFEST resource in the executable.

External manifest is App.exe.manifest.

In Windows XP, Sxs searches external manifest before internal manifest. If an external manifest is found, the internal manifest is ignored.

 In Windows Server 2003 and later, the order is reversed. Internal manifest is preferred over external manifest.

If you use external manifest, and your scenario works in Windows XP, but not Windows Server 2003 and later, please double check the executable does not have an internal manifest

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 11, 2009
    PingBack from http://asp-net-hosting.simplynetdev.com/internal-manifest-vs-external-manifest/

  • Anonymous
    May 18, 2009
    Application manifests work differently between XP and the 2003/Visa cores.  On Windows XP the external

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2009
    Hi, Can you explain us what was the reason behind this change? If we consider a situation where you want to modify a manifest, it looks more handy that you can override the default one with an external file. Having the internal one more priority forces to modify the .exe which would mean to modify also the build number in most cases.