Trusted Root certificates regularly disappear on Windows 7

Question

I've installed several self-signed certificates on my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 machine for development purposes. One was installed into Trusted Root CAs and 2 were installed into My Certificates and Trusted People. Every day or two the certificate installed into Trusted Root CAs disappears and I have to re-install it! This is annoying the hell out of me. Why is it happening and how do I stop it?

The other certificates (installed into other stores) do not disappear. My first thought was some kind of Group Policy, but my machine is not part of a domain - though it does obtains its IP address from a corporate DHCP server, so I'm not sure if they can somehow still manage to apply Group Policy to me.

Solution 1

"Root" store solved it

The solution was to install it into the Root store, which puts it under Registry (if you view physical stores in the Certificates snap-in), instead of the AuthRoot store, which puts it under Third-Party. I don't know why it was disappearing from Third-Party, but it hasn't happened since I made this change.

Thanks to Charlie Wilson for pointing me in the right direction. I just wanted to type out the full answer in case anyone else had this problem.

Solution 2

When you choose where the certificates should be stored are you choosing a physical store such as Registry or Local Computer? I am not sure what the problem is but I have always been successful with choosing Registry. Good luck.

Comments

[Admin]

Thanks! I thought I was going crazy after the third time my certificates went missing.

[Daniel]

This should be marked as the accepted solution

[Albert]

Its always something with Microsoft, never straightforward. Thank you.