Auto-entering Password In Sn.exe

Question

I need to create post build event to perform the following:

sn -i MyKey.pfx MyKeyContainerName
tlbimp $(ConfigurationName)\\MyCom.tlb /out:$(ConfigurationNam         


        

Answer 1

I've been researching this for almost two days now. I tried older versions of sn.exe (going back as far as 2.0!), but I couldn't get the echo PASSWORD | trick to work.

In the end, I did this:

[void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("'System.Windows.Forms")

Start-Process "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\sn.exe " -ArgumentList "-i 
`"Certificate.pfx`" VS_KEY_XXXXXXX" -NoNewWindow -Wait
[System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::SendWait("PASSWORDHERE~")

• SendWait() sends keys to the current activated window. Since we're starting sn.exe using Start-Process with the -NoNewWindow modifier, our window is already focussed.
• ~ is a special character, representing the ENTER button. {ENTER} is also possible, but that's for the Enter button near the numpad on your keyboard. Probably doesn't make any difference, but I just wanted to be sure.

Source I used: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff731008.aspx

I didn't need Visual Basic's AppActivate() in the end because of -NoNewWindow.

Update: Works even better with -Wait argument!