Installshield 2011 - crashes at build between "Embedding manifest" and signing

Since upgrading to a windows 8 & 8.1 machine all my InstallShield projects began failing at signing. The error occurs after or during the embedding manifest into setup.exe, with the following error:

Exception ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at address 0x76b34db0 trying to read address 0x00000001.

File : C:\Program Files (x86)\InstallShield\2011\System\isdev.exe Version : 17.0.0.714 Exception : c0000005 Address : 76b34db0 Access Type : read Access Address : 00000001

...

When I opted to debug after the crash, I then get an exception in visual studio saying error occurred in Wintrust.dll:

Unhandled exception at 0x76B34DB0 (wintrust.dll) in isdev.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000001.

The error message in the build log ends with:

ISDEV : error -7132: An error occurred streaming ISSetup.dll support file S:\InstallShields\Server Fix Pack_IS2011\Setup.inx Embedding manifest SetupExe.Admin.manifest into setup.exe Started signing 8F8D.tmp ... Successfully signed: 8F8D.tmp

To work around it in smaller projects I removed all signing options, particularly the use of spc and pvk certificate/private key files.

After building the install successfully without signing. I reintroduced signing using just a pfx certificate file. But I can't ever select the option to "sign files in package".

There are some projects where none of these steps work. Has anyone encountered these issues with Windows 8/8.1? Are there any workarounds?

Thanks

I was getting the same issue, an access violation in isdev.exe. I turned off all the signing like you mentioned, rebuilt it and it worked. I turned back on the signing and that now works.

For reference, I'm using a pfx certificate file and Sign Files in Package is no.

Thank you for your help!!!

Side Note: Make sure you have the certificate registered on your machine, that might have something to do with it. Good luck!