Microsoft Management Console (MMC)

This section describes the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), which can be used to create a console to manage certificate stores on Windows XP systems.

From the Internet Explorer (IE) chapter, we learned that, IE stores trusted root CA certificates in certificate stores. You can use IE to view and manage those certificate stores.

But you can also manage those certificate stores using other tools, because certificate stores are installed as part of the Windows operating system.

The best tool on a Windows XP system to manage certificate stores is the Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

Here is a brief introduction on MMC from wikipedia.org:

MMC snap-ins and consoles - The management console can host one or more modules which are Component Object Model components called snap-ins. Most of Microsoft's administration tools included with both Windows itself, and Windows Server System products are implemented as MMC "snap-ins". Third parties can also implement their own snap-ins using the MMC application programming interfaces published at MSDN. Snap-ins are registered in the [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT]\{CLSID} and [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MMC\Snapins] registry keys. A snap-in combined with MMC is called a console. It can be launch using mmc path\filename.msc.

Common snap-ins - The most prolific MMC is Computer Management, which appears in the Administrative Tools folder in the Control Panel. Computer Management is actually a collection of MMC snap-ins, including the Device Manager, Disk Defragmenter, Internet Information Services (if it's installed), Disk Management, Event Viewer, Local Users and Groups (except the home editions of Windows), Shared Folders, and other tools.

Other MMC snap-ins in common use include: Microsoft Exchange Server; Active Directory user and group, domain trust, and site snap-ins; Group Policy management; Services snap-in, for managing Windows services; Performance snap-in, for monitoring system performance and metrics; Event Viewer, for monitoring system and application events.

Based Windows documentation, we can create a MMC snap-in to manage certificate stores. See next section.

Last update: 2011.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Introduction of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

 Introduction of HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure)

 Using HTTPS with IE (Internet Explorer) 10

 Using HTTPS with Chrome 40

 Using HTTPS with Firefox 35

 Perl Scripts Communicating with HTTPS Servers

 PHP Scripts Communicating with HTTPS Servers

 Java Programs Communicating with HTTPS Servers

Certificate Stores and Certificate Console

Microsoft Management Console (MMC)

 Creating Certificates Console as a MMC Snap-In

 Exporting a List of Root CA Certificates

 Viewing Certificate Properties and Purposes

 Exporting a Root CA Certificate to a File

 Deleting a Root CA Certificate

 Importing a Root CA Certificate from a File

 Dispabling a Root CA Certificate

 .NET Programs Communicating with HTTPS Servers

 CAcert.org - Root CA Offering Free Certificates

 PKI CA Administration - Issuing Certificates

 Digital Signature - Microsoft Word 2007

 Digital Signature - OpenOffice.org 3

 S/MIME and Email Security

 PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) Terminology

 Outdated Tutorials

 References

 PDF Printing Version