Signing

Signing an assembly gives an application or component a unique identity If you need to push your assembly into the GAC then a strong name is a must A strong name consists of a simple text name, version number plus a public/private key pair This information can be stored in either a Personal Information Exchange (pfx) key file or a Strong Name Key (snk) file

PFX
Creating a test certificate (or self-cert) will generate a The pfx file is the encrypted private key

You can double click on this type of file in Windows Explorer to display the 'Certificate Import Wizard'.
Make sure that Visual Studio is closed

SNK
There is a tool called SN.exe which can be used to generate Strong Name key pairs