Certificates and trust on Windows clients
Read a certificate chain, understand trust stores, and diagnose untrusted, expired and name-mismatch errors without clicking through warnings.
- Level
- Intermediate
- Length
- About 40 minutes
- Contents
- 3 lessons · 1 video · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 1 Oct 2026
Skills you'll practise
- Read a certificate's issuer, validity and names
- Diagnose untrusted root, expired and name-mismatch errors
- Know the difference between the user (certmgr.msc) and computer (certlm.msc) stores
Course outline
- 1.Certificates and trust on Windows clientsVideo · 5 min
- 2.Why Windows trusts (or doesn't trust) a certificateLesson · 13 min
- 3.Reading certificates with certutil and the certificate storesLesson · 14 min
- 4.Certificate lifecycle on clients: auto-enrollment, renewal and expiryLesson · 12 min
- 5.Certificates and trust on Windows clients: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 16 questions
- 6.Corporate Wi-Fi rejects one laptopScenario
- 7.Final exam5 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
- Microsoft Learn: Certificate stores
- Microsoft Learn: Configure certificate autoenrollment
- Microsoft Learn: Troubleshooting certificate chain errors
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