This app failed to launch because of an issue with its license - visual-studio-2012

I'm happily in the middle of coding then I try to launch my app in debug mode but I get this error message.
Unable to activate Windows Store app
This app failed to launch because of an issue with its license
The app was launching fine a few minutes earlier so this came as a surprise. I tried restarting Visual Studio but doing so did not help.
I got the annoying "renew your developer license" dialog yesterday I think. It had renewed without issue.
How do I make this error message go away so i can debug my app?

Well, I got it working by deleting the main project's 'bin' and 'obj' folders. Cleaning and Rebuilding wasn't enough. Hope this answer saves someone else the few minutes of confusion I just experienced.

I recently had a similar issue. In my case I had to uninstall the re-install the app to get it working.
Hope this helps someone. Also, to find out further detail about why it failed, you can checkout the event logs:
Event Viewer > Applications and Services logs > Microsoft > Windows > Aps > Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational
There might be some more detail in there. In my case it was logged as an error event which said the app could not be launched because of a temporary issue with its license.

I just uninstalled the existing version of the app from the start screen, and then launched the app again from Visual Studio and it is launched just fine.
I think the reason behind this is because of renewing the license of Visual Studio and trying to launch an app that was installed when the previous license was active.

I see doing stuff with the bin and obj folders appears to be the accepted answer to this.
I fixed this issue by selecting the 'Uninstall and then re-install my package. All information about the application state is deleted.' check box under the Debug tab of the project properties. You can uncheck it once you've done it once for all future builds.
I haven't had any issue with this solution. Simple fix and you don't have to worry about someone doing something to folders that could cause bigger issues.
http://daxdude.blogspot.com/2013/04/c-error-unable-to-activate-windows.html

I've had this issue a few times now, most of the time deleting the Bin and Obj folders will clear the issue up (These folders are automatically generated during a project build so don't worry about deleting them)
I have found whilst debugging on a remote device (A tablet or phone) that Deleting these folders doesn't solve the problem though - in this case the best solution I have found is just to do a restart on the device I was remote debugging to.
Simple but it works!

I just cleaned my solution and re-started Visual Studio. That did the trick for me - and didn't involve hunting around for files to delete, so you might want to try that first.

go to BUILD-->Clean Solution and click and after its has been cleaned again go to BUILD-->Rebuild Solution. After it has successfully rebuilt your solution just deploy it(Ctrl+F5). This solved the problem for me.

Related

Xamarin.ios Error MSB6006: "codesign" exited with code 1

When trying to test my app on my device iPhone, I get the following error, I think it's something about registering my device.
/Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/External/xbuild/Xamarin/iOS/Xamarin.iOS.Common.targets(3,3):
Error MSB6006: "codesign" exited with code 1. (MSB6006)
(multifacturacion.iOS)
The strange thing is that this same device in another mac with xamarin if it works and with the same project.
If someone can help me with this, I have several days looking for a solution.
This went away for me after I cleaned the solution in Visual Studio.
(yes this is a complete answer, there are no citations, this is just what I did to fix it).
Open the info.plist and check "Automatic Provisioning".
Thing is, I am having this error regularily. I am working with a local developer certificate created on my Mac using a free Apple Id, but without a paid Apple Developer Membership. I am using a Windows based devloper workstation and program in Visual Studio 2019 with Xamarin.Forms 4.0. To get local deployment working again, I need to visit the general settings on my iPhone and remove my trusted account from the list of developer apps under device management which basically not only removes the account but also the app from the device.
Then I need to remove all occurances of the corresponding certificate on my Mac within the Keychain Utility and even the mobileprovision file on my harddrive located somewhere beneath my user directory.
Now I have to Start XCode on my Mac, open the project, I am working on and have it automatically "repair" the signing certificate which basically creates a new one and registers it in the Keychain. The moment I run the app from XCode, I need to always allow keychain access and on my iPhone I can see the account appear in the general settings again which I have to manually trust... again.
THEN I can open the corresponding project in my Visual Studio on my Windows Developer Workstation, rebuild and deploy the app and get no errors.
Without being able to say why, it could happen even the next time I try to build and deploy the app, that this error happens again... this is very (!) inconvenient and I didn't find any real solution for it yet...
remove your certificates from keychains and add again, close Info.plist open and fill de information on bundle singing option, that works for me, remember link your device with you provisioning.
The answer of Mephisztoe worked for me, except that I am working on Windows and you find the scheme-property in the project-settings and not in the plist-file.
Furthermore be sure that you installed fastlane (just open Extras > Options > Xamarin > Apple-Accounts and click on "install fastlane") and added your Apple-ID there.
I also deleted the certificate with the keychain-utility. That's why I had to reenter my password on the mac as I clicked on build on my windows machine.
With these steps done I can finally work again...
If the certificate of Apple developer is expired, you can get the error like "codesign", so you need to create a new certificate in Apple Developer site (https://developer.apple.com/account/), then download & install to your computer.
I have been struggling with the same issue for several days, the error came only when I tried to publish the app from my Windows VS 2019. It had no further details of why it was behaving like this.
What I changed was:
Created New Publishing Profile & Certificates
Instead of selecting Release in Configuration as suggested in this Microsoft article, I selected AppStore from the configuration.
Tried to recreate the archive and it was completed successfully.
Now when I tried to publish it, I encountered few error messages, I fixed them and submitted the app again. It worked fine.
For me, the issue was that there was a popup asking for a password on the network-attached Mac. I had to VNC into it and enter the password.
For some reason the first time I did this (and chose "always allow"), it failed again with this error, but the second time I ran it succeeded.
You'll want to make sure to have an app-specific password ready if you haven't already generated one. I have no idea why, but it prompts you for one in VS.

Error when using development time IIS support

Update: this bug has been fixed for a while now
I installed Visual Studio 2017.3 yesterday and was trying to used the new Development time IIS Support feature. I think I encountered a bug, and I was wondering if anyone knows a workaround this bug. When I used it with a new project it works fine most of the time. By most of the time, is that I think it is broken sometimes depending on the where the project is located/state of cached data, etc.
Sometimes I get an error "Value cannot be null. Parameter name: name". That's the entire error. No log files, no extra information.
I tried to enable the feature for an existing project I am working
on, it got that error.
I tried adding a new web project in a new solution it worked fine. I tried adding a new web project in the same solution as my project, it didn't work.
I deleted all temp files, all bin obj and .vs folders and .user files in the
solution. Same problem.
I deleted temp folder, visual studio user profile data, and restarted the PC same problem.
I tried again in the same solution with the project not having '.' in the name, it worked.
I did some modification to the project that was working and tried to launch again I got same error.
I reverted all changes so that the project was back to the "empty project" state, still same error.
I removed the project. Exited visual studio, deleted all temp/.vs/.use/bin/obj files. Then restarted and added the project again, it worked.
I restarted VS and tried to relaunch it didn't work.
The aspnet core version seems to be not related to the bug. I had the problem with projects targeting 1.1 and 2.0 and also had the feature working for both versions.
So obviously this is a bug in VS2017.3. Since even if I am doing something wrong I should at least get an error explaining what I do wrong not an ArgumentNullException message. I already made a bug report. I am wondering if someone knows a workaround thing bug.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Update: This bug has been fixed for a while now.
After some investigation and with help from a helpful member of Microsoft's Visual Studio Team, I found that Visual Studio was failing at the point where it grants folder read access to the IIS App Pool account. The method that gets the App Pool account name was returning null, and when that null value was passed to the System.Security.Principal.NTAccount class constructor, the ArgumentNullException is thrown.
A workaround that fixed the problem for me, was changing the App Pool to any other App Pool, trying to launch, then changing it back to the original/desired App Pool.
First You Must Update Visual studio with visual studio Installer and Launch the Visual Studio installer.
And Select the Development time IIS support component and Modify.
Wait For Download is Processing
The component is listed as optional in the Summary panel for the ASP.NET and web development workload.
Then you Create New Project Again
Problem Solved.

Visual Studio 2017 publish to Azure fails with null reference ("object reference not set to an instance of an object")

Crash on Azure publish from Visual Studio. The same thing happens in previous versions of Visual Studio, but in the past I've been able to work around the bug by clearing the appdata and if necessary resorting to resetting user settings per the responses to this question about a VS2015 issue.
Azure publish has been working up to now in 2017. Suddenly I am getting the dreaded null reference, and this time clearing the aforementioned data has not helped:
Restarted Visual Studio, restarted machine, cleared data a second time including both roaming and local appdata, all to no avail.
Just for others searching, in my case the issue was that I had previously disabled the "Microsoft VisualStudio Managed Publish" extension in VS2017 (probably in an attempt to get VS to be more responsive). To re-enable it, go to Tools > Extensions and Updates, enable it, then restart VS:
Thank you for your sharing. I have the same case as you. I accidently disabled the "Microsoft VisualStudio Managed Publish" extension in VS2017. The publish menu even doesn't show up in .net core solution explorer. To re-enable it, go to Tools > Extensions and Updates, enable it, then restart VS.
Unchecking/unselecting the Application Insights in the Publish workflow of Visual Studio 2017 fix the error for me.
This can be caused by a validation error in the service definition and configuration files.
Even though the editor doesn't highlight any problems, and the build completes successfully, there can be errors in these files and they are not handled properly when you attempt to publish, giving the null reference error.
I encountered this after modifying the files per these steps to configure SSL. I really wasn't expecting that to be the culprit, but in desperation I was trying everything I could think of that might be causing the problem. As soon as I commented out the change to the <certificates> element, the null reference error went away, and the publish succeeded.
(I now need to work out why the steps for SSL configuration didn't work, perhaps due to a change introduced by VS2017, but that's another story.)
I was experiencing the same issue as the OP. I created a new DB Project and then compared the settings of the new DB Project with the DB Project that was causing the Null Reference Exception upon Build or Publish. I noticed that our output directory was redirected to a non-standard location. After deleting all the files in the bin folder, the Build and Publish started working. YMMV
I found a lot of answers around that -- so may be there are more than one -- but none worked for me.
On my system it worked again after removing the installations for ASP.NET and Azure and installing it newly .. --> evth is fine.

VS 2012 Error on build of Hello World: "The operation could not be completed. The parameter is incorrect"

I have started up VS 2012. I created a new solution/project, and made the project a console app. In the provided "Program" class, in the "Main" method, I have added a single line, namely:
Console.WriteLine("Hello World");
This is the ONLY thing I have done.
I right-click on the solution name, and select "Build".
Immediately, a dialog/alert pops up with the title "Microsoft Visual Studio", containing the silver "X" in the red circle, followed by the enormously useful error text that reads:
The operation could not be completed. The parameter is incorrect.
I have done extensive searching on this very informative error, and have come to the conclusion that it pops up in many different circumstances. In my case, I started experiencing it some days ago (on a much more complex MVC app) and it seems intermittent. Sometimes I get the error, sometimes not. Sometimes I can close VS entirely and re-open and it will still be there, sometimes it will be gone for several hours. Rebooting the system (ick) usually makes it go away.
Any help out there? This is now driving me crazy. Many thanks in advance.
ADDITIONAL INFO: If I kill all Visual Studio applications in the task manager (rather than just closing the Visual Studio the more conventional way) it seems to always fix the problem on restarting Visual Studio. Still baffled.
Simply turning VS off and on again removed this error for me.
I tried to solve this by deleting the *.suo files, bin and obj folder, with no success. I tried to restart VS(2015) and reload the solution. All project references were fine.
I then killed all processes related to Visual Studio.
After that I was able to rebuild the solution.
For me this happened when I removed a project from the solution that wasn't at the same path anymore.
Weird, it was a greyed out project, but was still needed for the build somehow?!
I found out where it was referenced, in my .sln file I had a References entry pointing to the guid of a missing or deleted project in the solution. This would cause an error.
You can also check the properties pages of the solution, one of them gives a message about a project with the name "" that doesn't exist.
So basically, cleanup the References section in your .sln until it builds.
This happened to me in a new web project in VS 2015. I got the error when I tried to build or clean the solution. Closing down VS and deleting everything in the bin folder worked for me.
For me what helped was to delete all bin obj folders and rebuild the solution.
I was moving an mvc project from 2013 to 2015.
Strange as it is - happened to 2 solutions, but not for every other I had.
For me, my project was not opening on VS 2022 ,i tried this and it worked!
Directory: Your project folder/.vs/SolutionName/.suo
Solution: Delete All .suo files from above directory
Note: If you cant find , just search '.suo' on project folder.
Run the project.

The Debugger cannot continue running the process. Unable to start debugger

I have a Lightswitch 2012 application. It's been working fine for weeks. I made some changes and F5 stopped working. When I click on Start (toolbar) it gives this error message and does nothing.
"The Debugger cannot continue running the process. Unable to start debugging"
Note: It does compile file, it just doesn't run.
If I rollback to an earlier version then it works fine - i.e. it is solution specific.
Here is a video of the current version of my solution with the problem:
http://screencast.com/t/TD4RzLASO
and here is the previous version of the solution from earlier today (and no, I don't know what I changed). As you can see, at least it does something with F5 or Start:
http://screencast.com/t/wX5fRDPz
Rebooting doesn't help... ;)
Maybe you should select start up project which can be started.
Solution Explorer -> On your startable project right mouse click -> Set as Start up Project.
I had this situation when i unloaded my main lightswitch project and other project which is dll has been selected automatically and when i reloaded my main project "The Debugger cannot continue running the process. Unable to start debugging" exception was shown, because debuger was trying to load DLL.
Sometimes you need to start up a project which is compiled as a dll, for instance when testing WCF services.
To do so:
Projects -> 'Set Startup Projects...' -> Select 'Multiple Startup Projects' and set action to 'Start' for each one.
It's a pity you didn't recorded the whole screen, so I can't confirm, but I had the same error a few times...
When this happens, my "output panel" isn't visible and even I try to go on Menu -> View -> Output the panel don't appear.
I need to restart my Visual Studio 2013.
Then my output panel is visible again and everything works fine.
I discovered the cause was an extension which I installed on my Visual Studio.
I encountered this problem after removing some projects from the solution. I wasn't able to pinpoint the exact cause, but closing the solution, deleting the solution file, then opening the project and re-adding supporting projects solved the issue for me. Kind of a sledge hammer, but only takes a minute to do if you don't have a lot of projects.
Also, there are some people that uses a "One Click" Certification in your settings that you'll want to make sure its set up right, re-install or unchecked in-which this case was my problem. I finally got it working myself, but check that too just in case. Again this would be for most Visual Studio Versions only. Im 2013 Ult.

Resources