Internal Manifest vs External Manifest
Internal manifest is the RT_MANIFEST resource in the executable.
External manifest is App.exe.manifest.
In Windows XP, Sxs searches external manifest before internal manifest. If an external manifest is found, the internal manifest is ignored.
In Windows Server 2003 and later, the order is reversed. Internal manifest is preferred over external manifest.
If you use external manifest, and your scenario works in Windows XP, but not Windows Server 2003 and later, please double check the executable does not have an internal manifest
Comments
Anonymous
May 11, 2009
PingBack from http://asp-net-hosting.simplynetdev.com/internal-manifest-vs-external-manifest/Anonymous
May 18, 2009
Application manifests work differently between XP and the 2003/Visa cores.  On Windows XP the externalAnonymous
June 04, 2009
Hi, Can you explain us what was the reason behind this change? If we consider a situation where you want to modify a manifest, it looks more handy that you can override the default one with an external file. Having the internal one more priority forces to modify the .exe which would mean to modify also the build number in most cases.