Request a Certificate

You can use the Certificates snap-in to request certificates. You can request any type of certificate that has been preconfigured and made available by an administrator of the certification authority (CA) that will process the certificate request.

Users or local Administrators is the minimum group membership required to complete this procedure. Review the details in "Additional considerations" in this topic.

To request a certificate

1. Open the Certificates snap-in for a user or computer.

2. In the console tree, click Certificates - Current User or Certificates (Local Computer). Select the Personal certificate store.

3. On the Action menu, point to All Tasks, and then click Request New Certificate to start the Certificate Enrollment wizard. Click Next.

4. Select the types of certificates that you want to request.

5. You can click Details to review additional information about each certificate.

   If a caution symbol appears below the certificate, you might need to provide additional information before requesting that type of certificate. Click the More information is required to enroll for this certificate. Click here to configure message and provide the requested information, such as a subject name or the location of a valid signing certificate.

6. To finish, click Enroll.

Additional considerations

• User certificates can be managed by the user or by an administrator. Certificates issued to a computer or service can only be managed by an administrator or user who has been given the appropriate permissions.
  
  
• To open the Certificates snap-in, see Add the Certificates Snap-in to an MMC.
  
  
• You can use this procedure to request certificates from an enterprise CA only. To request certificates from a stand-alone CA, you need to request certificates by using Web pages. The Web page for a Windows-based CA is located at http://servername/certsrv, where servername is the name of the server hosting the CA.
  
  
• If the requested certificate type requires approval before it is issued, you need to retrieve the completed certificate via Web pages.
  
  
• In order to request a Digital Signature Standard (DSS) certificate from an enterprise CA, you must select the User Signature Only certificate template in the Certificate Request Wizard.
  
  

Additional references

• Subject Names
  
  
• Certificate Extensions
  
  
• Cryptographic Service Providers
  
  
• Guidelines for Using Alternate Signature Formats