certificates issued to desktops???

[Sandy]

Currently have a 2000 domain with W2K servers and,
primarily XP desktops. Need to uninstall our enterprise
certificate authority and reinstall on another server.
Looking at the MMC snapin for certification authority, I
see hundreds of certificates -- most issued to desktops.
Why were they issued certificates? And, more importantly,
what happens in the interim between uninstalling &
reinstalling a certificate authority?

 

[Holly Mazerolle]

Hi Sandy,
If you have an Enterprise Certificate Authority installed it could
be that something called auto enrollment has occurred. This means that each
client would have been issued a certificate when the installation took
place. The question is though, are you using the certificates or not. You
will need to make sure you are not using them because uninstalling when a
certificate is in use could potentially cause a loss of data. One example
might be that they might be used for EFS (Encrypted File Systems) or for
some interaction with a Web Server. Due to the potential loss of data and
other idiosyncrasies you might want to consider calling support for
assistance with the removal and reinstall.


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