ClickOnce configuration files getting randomly corrupted

Question

We're running into an issue with our ClickOnce applications. These are deployed to IIS, a user clicks the link to run, it opens fine and continues to run with multiple launches until the machine is rebooted. Once this happens, we're getting "Activation failed due to Windows Side-by-Side error".

Looking in the local install location, C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\7RRWQPAZ.X5P\8TV8504G.0VD\[MyAppName].exe_fedcf10ab6f67f7e_0004.0002_none_fe03e62d40fdbbce I see a configuration file - [MyAppName].exe.config. Inspecting this, most things look fine except for the very last line. This is all XML, so should close with >, but instead we're getting gibberish characters. For instance - </configuratio¡ø·Ð instead of </configuration>

This appears to be happening to just our laptop users. We're using Dell Encryption V10 on mobile machines (desktop users not experiencing the same issue), so were working under the assumption this may be causing the issue. However, after removing this folder path from the encryption targets, we're still having the same issues. The really odd thing here is that between the application running fine and then becoming corrupt with invalid XML, the configuration file's last modified time remains unchanged.

Has anybody experienced this? Point me in a new direction?

Tks

Answer 1

So, after much poking about, turns out our Dell Encryption was corrupting the configuration file. Solution was to exclude these folders from encryption.