Certificate imported into personal store not appearing in MMC -> Certificates

Question

I have a self signed certificate that was generated on a Windows 10 machine using the Powershell command:

New-SelfSignedCertificate -DnsName ServerNameHere -NotAfter (Get-Date).AddYears(20) -FriendlyName "Test API Cert" -CertStoreLocation cert:\LocalMachine\My

I exported this certificate with a private key to a PFX file and transferred this to my old Windows 7 test machine. (I have a legacy customer I am working with who still has some Win7 devices that I need my software to work on)

On the Windows 7 machine I imported the certificate into the Personal store.

I then opened the MMC, added the certificate add in and opened the personal store. It doesnt show the certificate.

Is there some reason that it is not showing here?

`It doesnt show the certificate` -- application doesn't show the certificate or MMC? — Crypt32, Oct 12 '20 at 11:12
Are you opening the Current User's or the Local Machine's certificate store with the MMC? — garethTheRed, Oct 12 '20 at 11:27
@Crypt32 Doesn't show in MMC. I haven't gotten around to installing the application software yet. — CathalMF, Oct 12 '20 at 11:41
make sure if you haven't installed the cert into current user store by accident. — Crypt32, Oct 12 '20 at 11:42
@Crypt32 You are right. It is in the User Store. Why is it going there? When installing it doesnt give a choice of User or Local Machine. On other machines it always goes into Local Machine. — CathalMF, Oct 12 '20 at 12:26

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 12 '20 at 12:39

The problem is that you accidentally installed the certificate to Current User store. When you double-click on PFX certificate, Certificate Import Wizard defaults to Current User\Personal store. It doesn't offer Local Machine store on Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 or older OS versions. Store location selection choice was added in Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 and newer.

This is why you can't install PFX to local machine store from Windows Explorer on Windows 7. On these operating systems, you have to explicitly open Certificates MMC snap-in focused on local machine context and import certificate from there.

Certificate imported into personal store not appearing in MMC -> Certificates

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