Q:

App.config connection string Protection error

I am running into an issue I had before; can't find my reference on how to solve it.
Here is the issue. We encrypt the connection strings section in the app.config for our client application using code below:
        config = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None)
        If config.ConnectionStrings.SectionInformation.IsProtected = False Then
            config.ConnectionStrings.SectionInformation.ProtectSection(Nothing)

            ' We must save the changes to the configuration file.'
            config.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Modified, True)
        End If

The issue is we had a salesperson leave. The old laptop is going to a new salesperson and under the new user's login, when it tries to to do this we get an error. The error is:
Unhandled Exception: System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: 
An error occurred executing the configuration section handler for connectionStrings. ---> System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: Failed to encrypt the section 'connectionStrings' using provider 'RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider'. 
Error message from the provider: Object already exists.
---> System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: Object already exists

A:

I found a more elegant solution that in my original answer to myself. I found if I just logged in as th euser who orignally installed the application and caused the config file connectionstrings to be encrypted and go to the .net framework directory in a commadn prompt and run 
aspnet_regiis -pa "NetFrameworkConfigurationKey" "{domain}\{user}"

it gave the other user permission to access the RSA encryption key container and it then works for the other user(s).
Just wanted to add it here as I thought I had blogged this issue on our dev blog but found it here, so in case I need to look it up again it will be here. Will add link to our dev blog point at this thread as well. 

