By default each project is selected to use the embedded manifest.  This doesn’t sound too harmful, right?

Well, ClickOnce and Registration-Free COM applications require an external manifest.  So, if you use ClickOnce, it will try to create it own external application manifest which could cause a conflict with the embedded one. Here is the error you might get when you try to install the ClickOnce application:

ERROR SUMMARY
    Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log.
    * Activation of \\MyShare\MyApplication.application resulted in exception. Following failure messages were detected:
        + Reference in the manifest does not match the identity of the downloaded assembly MyApplication.exe.

This error seems a bit cryptic at first.  Especially if you don’t know that Visual Studio is embedding a manifest for. Fortunately, this error is easy to get around.  You simple just set this option to “Create application without a manifest”.  Or manually add “<NoWin32Manifest>true</NoWin32Manifest> ” to your project file like so:

<PropertyGroup>
    <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>
    <Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">AnyCPU</Platform>
    <ProductVersion>9.0.21022</ProductVersion>
    <SchemaVersion>2.0</SchemaVersion>
    <OutputType>WinExe</OutputType>
    <AppDesignerFolder>Properties</AppDesignerFolder>
    <RootNamespace>MyApplication</RootNamespace>
    <AssemblyName>MyApplication</AssemblyName>
    <TargetFrameworkVersion>v3.5</TargetFrameworkVersion>
    <FileAlignment>512</FileAlignment>
    <NoWin32Manifest>true</NoWin32Manifest>
  </PropertyGroup>