ClickOnce Error, Cannot activate a deployment with earlier version

Question

I have a click once application with no minimum required version in the manifest and yet I am getting this error below. How can I resolve this issue? What could be causing this? I had the user uninstall the application and then install it by giving them the production URL.

APPLICATION SUMMARY

• Installable application.
• Trust url parameter is set.

ERROR SUMMARY

Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log.

• Activation of http://myapplication.com/setup/SCMS.TAMS.App.application?token=c822256b-b97f-94ba-11e1-12017cbb23f4&JPORT=33333 resulted in exception. Following failure messages were detected:
• Cannot activate a deployment with earlier version than the current minimum required version of the application.

COMPONENT STORE TRANSACTION FAILURE SUMMARY

No transaction error was detected.

WARNINGS

There were no warnings during this operation.

OPERATION PROGRESS STATUS

• [11/18/2011 10:22:20 AM] : Activation of http://myapplication.com/setup/SCMS.TAMS.App.application?token=c822256b-b97f-94ba-11e1-12017cbb23f4&JPORT=33333 has started.
• [11/18/2011 10:22:21 AM] : Processing of deployment manifest has successfully completed.
• [11/18/2011 10:22:21 AM] : Installation of the application has started.

ERROR DETAILS

Following errors were detected during this operation. * [11/18/2011 10:22:21 AM] System.Deployment.Application.DeploymentException (SubscriptionState) - Cannot activate a deployment with earlier version than the current minimum required version of the application. - Source: System.Deployment - Stack trace: at System.Deployment.Application.SubscriptionStore.CheckMinimumRequiredVersion(SubscriptionState subState, AssemblyManifest deployment) at System.Deployment.Application.SubscriptionStore.CheckDeploymentSubscriptionState(SubscriptionState subState, AssemblyManifest deployment) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.InstallApplication(SubscriptionState& subState, ActivationDescription actDesc) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.PerformDeploymentActivation(Uri activationUri, Boolean isShortcut, String textualSubId, String deploymentProviderUrlFromExtension, BrowserSettings browserSettings, String& errorPageUrl) at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.ActivateDeploymentWorker(Object state)

Answer 1

I found out what the problem was. We have two load balanced servers and one of them had the prior version of the application. The users were bouncing between servers and sometimes getting the wrong version.

Answer 2

You'll want to look here and make sure that your Automatic Update Options are configured correctly.

• Chances are that you haven't updated your Application's version to be higher than what has already been deployed.
• Or that your application's version isn't greater than or equal to a Minimum Version that you've set for the application (if you've set that).

Answer 3

I ran into the same error message, but from a very different root cause. Since the search engines all point to this question (and if I post my variant as a question it will probably be tagged a "duplicate") here's the answer to my version of the problem:

I had a single project that I wanted to deploy multiple times. (One for production, another for test. So I created multiple project files linked to the same source code. Then used configuration settings to modify the executables during compile to link up to test or production databases.) What happened is the different installs became confused with each other. I found two solutions. 1) Use a different certificate for each project. (or one project with no certificate and the other with a certificate). 2) Make the application assembly name different between the two projects.

I hope this is useful to someone.