“An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist” when sign the assembly

I'm working on a ClickOnce deploy-able project. Since begining of the project and many build and published, no error about this happen. but suddenly this error occur:

Cannot import the following key file: ***.pfx. The key file may be password protected. To correct this, try to import the certificate again or import the certificate manually into the current user’s personal certificate store.

Then I try to reselect the ***.pfx in the "Project Properties->Signing->Choose a name key file". Then This message appear:

“An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist”

I don't understand why this happen. After searching the net and many attempts for several hours, I finally able to solve it just by running the Visual Studio as Administrator.


I got it from here: Error when using Visual Studio 2010 for assembly signing: “An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist”

But my solution was not from the chosen as answer but from Josh M.:

Running Visual Studio as Administrator fixed this issue for me.

Problem Solved.

ps: Maybe I should always run the Visual Studio as Administrator. Who knows, I might save several hours of searching.