How to install SignTool.exe for Windows 10

Question

How to install SignTool.exe in Visual Studio 2015 for Windown 10? I tried to build my project but the program threw an error :

Error An error occurred while signing: SignTool.exe not found.

Answer 1

You need to install the Windows 10 SDK.

1. Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 contains it already, but it is not installed by default. You should go to Control Panel -> Programs and Features, find Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and select "Change".

Visual Studio 2015 setup will start. Select "Modify".

In Visual Studio components list find "Universal Windows App Development Tools", open the list of sub-items and select "Windows 10 SDK (10.0.10240)".

Windows 10 SDK in VS 2015 Update 1 Setup

2. Of cause you can install Windows 10 SDK directly from Microsoft: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=698771

As josant already wrote - when the installation finishes you will find the SignTool.exe in the folders:

• x86 -> c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86
• x64 -> c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x64\

Answer 2

If you only want SignTool and really want to minimize the install, here is a way that I just reverse-engineered my way to:

1. Download the .iso file from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk (current download link is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=2022797) The .exe download will not work, since it's an online installer that pulls down its dependencies at runtime.
2. Unpack the .iso with a tool such as 7-zip.
3. Install the Installers/Windows SDK Signing Tools-x86_en-us.msi file - it's only 388 KiB large. For reference, it pulls in its files from the following .cab files, so these are also needed for a standalone install:
   • 4c3ef4b2b1dc72149f979f4243d2accf.cab (339 KiB)
   • 685f3d4691f444bc382762d603a99afc.cab (1002 KiB)
   • e5c4b31ff9997ac5603f4f28cd7df602.cab (389 KiB)
   • e98fa5eb5fee6ce17a7a69d585870b7c.cab (1.2 MiB)

There we go - you will now have the signtool.exe file and companions in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.17763.0\x64 (replace x64 with x86, arm or arm64 if you need it for another CPU architecture.)

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It is also possible to commit signtool.exe and the other files from this folder into your version control repository if want to use it in e.g. CI scenarios. I have tried it and it seems to work fine.

(All files are probably not necessary since there are also some other .exe tools in this folder that might be responsible for these dependencies, but I am not sure which ones could be removed to make the set of files even smaller. Someone else is free to investigate further in this area. :) I tried to just copy signtool.* and that didn't work, so at least some of the other files are needed.)