Graphical Flowchart of Signing Process for Devices
The graphical representation that is shown in this topic illustrates how the parts of the signing process are related.
The first step in signing your project is to select a certificate. The certificate can be already in your certificate store, or you can import new ones and select those.
After you have selected your certificate, you must decide whether to provision the device with it. If you do this, select which certificate store on the device (the privileged store or the unprivileged store) will receive the certificate.
Every time that you build, your project is signed with the certificate you have selected. Every time that you deploy (for example, F5), the device is provisioned with the selected certificate, which is put into the selected certificate store on the device.
In the Visual Studio IDE, you typically set your signing options on one of the project property pages.
If you do not want your project Authenticode-signed, this flowchart does not apply to your project.
Flowchart
.gif "VS Signtool Flowchart graphic")
See Also
Tasks
How to: Sign a Visual Basic or Visual C# Application (Devices)
How to: Sign a Visual Basic or Visual C# Assembly (Devices)
How to: Sign the Project Output in a Visual C++ Project (Devices)
How to: Sign a CAB File (Devices)