My question falls under the category "I have written an application that
works fine on my developer machine, but throws a SecurityException on all
other computers". I spent almost the entire day reading through the
information already available on this topic. I now have a basic understanding
of code access security in .NET, the CASPOL tool, the TBLIMP tool, strong
names and signed assemblies. However, I still haven't been able to solve my
problem, and I'm close to giving up.

The application I wrote references Interop.DSOFramer (for embedded Office
documents) and Interop.WMPLib (for embedded Media Player), as well as the
corresponding ActiveX controls AxInterop.DSOFramer and AxInterop.WMPLib. In
addition to that, it also uses an SQL 2005 Express database, accesses the
Windows registry and needs write access to the file system. I'm using Visual
C# Express on Windows XP with .NET Framework 2.0 SDK

Here is what I did so far...

* I learnt that the host system needs to grant access to the application's
features (I develop it in a fully trusted environment) in order to be run on
other client's machines. I tried using CAPSOL as part of my installation
tool, but politely got informed that my application does not have a strong
name, which is required.

* I further learnt that, in order for my application to receive a strong
name, it needs to be signed with a strong name key file. I created a new
keyfile in the project's "Signing" properties (I also successfully tried
creating one with sn.exe) and configured the app to be signed. I then
received a notification that the signing failed because the referenced
interop assemblies mentioned above do not have a strong name.

* I searched the Microsoft's website for strong named versions of the used
assemblies, but couldn't  find any. According to a MSDN KB article, the only
other option I have in this case is to link the interop assemblies with my
own keyfile. Unfortunately, the solution posted for Visual Studio .NET 2003
didn't help me, because the "Wrapper Assembly Key File/Name" options do not
seem to exist in Visual C# Express.

* I have not yet attempted to use the TLBIMP tool with the COM DLLs in order
to generate signed interop assemblies.

So here I'm stuck with a cool app that can't be signed, thus not trusted,
and therefore doesn't work anywhere else. How can I make my application (with
all its security sensitive features and requirements) run on a computer other
than my own? Surely, there must be a very simple way to accomplish this, but
I just don't see it. I'm all in for strong .NET security, but this has been a
really frustrating developer experience so far. I want to finish this app,
wrap it into an installer and be done with it - without complicated system
configuration steps on the user's end (i.e. to lower .NET security settings,
add code access groups etc).

Any help would be highly appreciated.

~Max