How to Deleting a SSL Certificate using MMC

Hendrik WieseInformation Security Manager
Published:
I had a question today where the user wanted to know how to delete an SSL Certificate, so I thought that I would quickly add this How to! Article for your reference.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DELETE A CERTIFICATE?
1. If an incorrect certificate was installed on your machine
2. If you get a certificate error stating that your current certificate is corrupt.
3. When testing certificates in your environment, and thus need to delete the temporary installed certificates.

SO IN THIS EXAMPLE I WILL WANT TO LOCATE THE FOLLOWING CERTIFICATE AND PERMANENTLY DELETE IT:
Certificate Name: Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority

TO BEGIN LETS OPEN MMC BY DOING THE FOLLOWING
1. Click Start > Run (or press the windows key + R on your keyboard) and type in MMC
2. Press Ok (hit enter on your keyboard)
 Run MMC3. Now click on File > Add/Remove Snap-in...
 MMC Add Remove Snap-In4. In the "Available snap-ins:" locate Certificates and click the Add button
 Locate Certificate and click Add5. In the Certificate snap-in window select Computer account and hit next
 Select Computer Account6. On the Select Computer windows leave the "Local computer: (the computer this console is running on)" selected and click Finish
 Select Computer Window7. Your updated snap-in window should now have the Certificate (Local Computer) in the "Selected snap-ins:" column of the window, so it should look like the following image. On this window click OK
 Updated Snap In Window8. In my case the certificate was installed in the Personal tree object or folder as referred to by some. But please go through all the sub folders to ensure that the certificate that you are trying to delete is deleted from all the folders that it resides in. To delete the certificate in question (In my case "Go Daddy Class 2 Certification Authority") do the following, locate your certificate > right click on it and click on delete.
 Delete Certificate9. Next a Certificate warning window will be presented for you to confirm the deletion of your certificate, it will look like the below window. Simply click Yes to confirm deletion:
 Confirm Deletion
Your certificate has now been deleted. That concludes this tutorial. Please let me know should you have any questions or would like me to add anything to this article.

Please rate this article or leave a comment if it was helpful?

Kind Regards,
Hendrik Wiese
0
16,318 Views
Hendrik WieseInformation Security Manager

Comments (5)

Hi,
 I did this but the certificate still appears again when i restart the server
Hendrik WieseInformation Security Manager

Author

Commented:
@Obiefule Chika David

Just ensure that the cert is not present under one of the other folders, such as Trusted Root Cert Auth etc.
It is.
Does this mean it can't be deleted?
It isn't present under any other folder. It is only present in the Trusted Cert folder and that's where i deleted it from
We all know that how much the SSL certificate is required to make the connection between server and web browser more secure and integrated, but many a time this certificate also create a problem for the user to get the data more private and integral, and that is why deleting the SSL certificate become necessary.
( https://babasupport.org/printer/printer-repair-dubai/ ) also has also experienced the same and going to delete the certificate with the MMC.

Have a question about something in this article? You can receive help directly from the article author. Sign up for a free trial to get started.