The missing EDIT button in the CA properties extensions tab

MS2065 — Sun, 27 May 2007 15:54:00 GMT

To adjust the CRL and AIA distribution point there are at least three choices to do it. The most familiar way to change the distribution point might be through the CA MMC user interface. The second way is to directly change the registry key CACertPublicationURLs or CRLPublicationURLs with regedit.exe. Alternatively, you can use certutil -setreg to change these keys in the registry.

While having full editing control over the multi-valued registry key, you may miss an edit button in the UI to conveniently change an existing entry without retyping the full URL.

Only very few people are aware that you can use a copy/paste trick to overcome the missing edit button. Here are the steps to copy an existing CRL or AIA entry and create a new one:

Open the Certification Authority MMC snap-in.
Open the CA properties.
Go to the Extensions tab.
Select the entry that you want to copy from the list of available CRL or AIA entries.
Press <CTRL>+<C> to copy the entry into the clip-board.
Click the Add… button and press <CTRL>+<V>. The paste operation is certainly not limited to the Add Location window. Once the URL has been copied into the clipboard it can be pasted everywhere.
Change the distribution point as appropriate.

How to download the most current CA certificate from a certificate web enrollment station

MS2065 — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 03:08:00 GMT

In some cases, you might want to download the most current CA certificate from a web enrollment station. Use the following URL to do so:

http://www.contoso.com/certsrv/certnew.p7b?ReqID=CACert&Renewal=-1&Enc=b64

Replace www.contoso.com with the DNS computer name of your web enrollment station. The renewal=-1 parameter indicates that the latest certificate is targeted. The index of the renewal parameter refers to the CA certificate that is actually downloaded. 0 would be the CA certificate that was generated during CA setup. 1 is the CA certificate after the first renewal and so on.

Carsten

Windows PKI blog : usability

The missing EDIT button in the CA properties extensions tab

How to download the most current CA certificate from a certificate web enrollment station