ClickOnce - Store metadata "CurrentBind" is not valid"

[Ian Dendle]

Hello Everyone,

I am dealing with a problem regarding a clickonce application created with
Visual Studio 2008 in C#.

This particular application is deployed from a website on a company
intranet. I have configured the deployment to NOT check for updates at all,
nor is there a minimum version. However, inside the application, the user is
able to click on a "Check for updates" button. My application then uses the
"ApplicationDeployment" Class to check if there is an update, and if there
is, download it. The application then restarts as the updated version.

This was all going fine, until one day when I published the application, I
noticed that the publishing settings had been reset. I re-entered them as
they were before, and published the update as normal.

Since that moment, clients are unable to check for updates as the call to
"ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.CheckForUpdate()" fails with a null
reference exception. After debugging with "Just My Code" turned off, I found
that the root exception is as above - "Store metadata "CurrentBind" is not
valid"

This error occurs after the client gets the maifest information from the
website hosting the deployment pages.

I've looked at the manifest to see if the application identity has changed,
and as far as I can see, it has not.

Removing and re-installing the application fixes the issue - however,
performing this on 200+ machines that are not part of any domain is a
daunting task.

Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Matt