Windows Autopilot uses several mechanisms to function. A common one is the device’s hardware hash, also called the hardware ID. There are several ways to gather the hardware ID from a device to use in Windows Autopilot. In this post, I will show step-by-step how to get the hardware ID from a system with PowerShell…
Certificate chain issues are extremely widespread and more common than you think. You start to see how many websites have broken certificate chains when you start performing SSL inspection on a network. If you want to read more about certificate chains, my post Certificate Chain goes into more detail. My website, thedxt.ca, has a server…
This post will explain the main components of a certificate and how they contribute to a certificate chain. A certificate chain consists of three main components: Root CA A root CA is the most trusted source of authority for certificates. It is the first link in a certificate chain, and all certificates are issued by…
While having your SSL/TLS certificate in a PFX file is great, as most applications support the PFX file, there are still some cases where a PFX file is not supported, and you need the certificate in the PEM format as a CRT file (also called a CER file) with a key file (also called a…
The VMware vCenter root certificate is an essential part of vCenter. When you install vCenter, it also installs the VMCA (VMware Certificate Authority) in your vCenter. The VMCA is a barebones CA for vCenter that issues certificates to the various elements of vCenter as needed. You should install the VMCA root certificate on your system…
Once you have exported your certificate, the next step is installing the certificate PFX on other servers as needed. In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to install an exported PFX certificate file on a Microsoft Windows system. Prerequisites The Process
If you work with wild card certificates, it’s common to need to deploy them to more than one server. You will need to export the certificate to install it on other systems. In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to export a certificate using MMC (Microsoft Management Console). The Process
When you create a CSR and provide it to your certificate vendor or CA (Certificate Authority), you must complete the CSR (Certificate Signing Request). In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to complete a CSR. Prerequisites You can check which system has the pending certificate by checking the Certificate Enrollment Requests in MMC…
I recently discovered that I caused an unintended side effect on Windows 10 when deploying a default taskbar for all users. In my post Intune Deploy Default Taskbar I inadvertently introduced a bug to the Windows 10 Start Menu making it so users can’t customize anything. The bug is that users can pin programs to…
In the past, I’ve made a few one-off PowerShell scripts to set various registry settings. I find myself needing to do this more and more. I’ve always just forced my registry settings with no regard to whether the settings were already correct. A perfect example of this is my PowerShell script to Disable Auto Windows…
