How to install SignTool.exe for VS 2017

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\

The Visual Studio Build tools are a different download than the IDE. They appear to be a pretty small subset, and they're called Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019 (download).

You can use the GUI to do the installation, or you can script the installation of msbuild:

vs_buildtools.exe --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools --quiet

Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools is a "wrapper" ID for the three subcomponents you need:

• Microsoft.Component.MSBuild
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreBuildTools
• Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler

You can find documentation about the other available CLI switches here.

The build tools installation is much quicker than the full IDE. In my test, it took 5-10 seconds. With --quiet there is no progress indicator other than a brief cursor change. If the installation was successful, you should be able to see the build tools in %programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\BuildTools\MSBuild\Current\Bin.

If you don't see them there, try running without --quiet to see any error messages that may occur during installation.