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I'm trying to create a self-signed certificate from within the IIS 7 snap-in, with little luck. When prompted for a friendly name for the certificate, I type in the name, and click OK, but then I am shown:

There was an error while performing this operation. Details: Access is denied.

I am doing this while logged on with an account with full administrative privileges.

Any ideas?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Check the permissions on the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys folder. On my domain joined W2k8 member server the permissions are set like so:

Everyone
List folder / read data
Read attributes
Read extended attributes
Create files /write data
Create folders / append data
Write attributes
Write extended attributes
Read permissions
This folder only

SERVER\Administrators Full Control This folder only

No inheritance

Additionally, all of the files in this folder have their own permissions. You may want to see if your self signed cert is being created and deleted when the access denied error appears.

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    My folder permissions were listed exactly as yours. By changing SERVER\Administrators from "This folder only" to "This folder, subfolders, and files" I had immediate success. It appears that my certificates were be created, but inaccessible, like you hinted at.
    – Matt Hanson
    Sep 1, 2009 at 5:01
  • Yes the same happened to me, and this hint saved my evening :-) Thanks
    – ila
    Apr 23, 2010 at 15:26
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Did you run the IIS7 snapin as Administrator? If you right click on the IIS7 icon and click on "Run as Administrator" it should work.

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  • I tried that, with no luck.
    – Matt Hanson
    Aug 24, 2009 at 4:47
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Have you tried using the Administrator user account? I know sometimes that even though I may be using an administrative account, Windows wants the Administrator for performing certain operations.

One example that I have encountered with that scenario was running adprep on a domain controller so that I could join a Windows Server 2008 R2 box to the domain. No matter that I was an Enterprise Admin, it would not let me with my account. I had to Run As Administrator.

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    That was one of my first suspensions, as I actually have the default administrator account disabled. I did try enabling it and rebooting, but had the same result.
    – Matt Hanson
    Aug 24, 2009 at 4:49

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