Error building BlogEngine.Net – Cryptographic failure ‘Access is denied’

BlogEngine.NET v1.4.5 has been easy to install and configure, but I ran into one little hiccup while trying to compile the full source code solution:

Cryptographic failure while signing assembly 'BlogEngine.Core.dll' -- 'Access is denied.'

Unfortunately I’m using Windows Vista and had opened Visual Studio as a normal user. The solution in this case is to simply open it via ‘Run as administrator’ and the error will go away.

Another solution when getting an ‘Access is denied’ error while signing assemblies is to grant the current user full control to your %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys directory (location in Windows XP, anyway)

See also: Access Denied While Signing Assembly