How to import a .pfx certificate on a remote computer using PowerShell v4.0 (4036147)

When troubleshooting installation/pairing issues it may be necessary to import a certificate from the core to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities of the machine . If RDP access is not available, the operation can be executed easily via PowerShell.

Please note that Powershell 4.0 is installed by default on Windows 2012 R2 machines.

Warning: Quest does not support PowerShell scripting in AppAssure. Click here for more details.

For the purposes of this article, it is assumed that the certificate is called cert.pfx with the password abc_123 and is located in c:\ on the local machine and that the remote machine is named machine-1. To import the certificate, please do the following:

1. Open a remote session to the machine to be troubleshot

Enter-PsSession -computer machine-1

You will get a prompt showing that you are logged on the remote machine.
(Please note that PowerShell remoting is enabled by default on Windows 2012 and later)

2. Stop the Agent service

Stop-Service AppAssureAgent

3. Enter the password as a secure string

$pass = read-host -assecurestring

(you will be prompted to enter it with the following message
WARNING: A script or application on the remote computer machine-1 is asking to read a line securely.
sensitive information, such as your credentials, only if you trust the remote computer and the application
that is requesting it.)

4. Import the .pfx certificate

import-pfxcertificate -filepath c:\cert.pfx -certstorelocation cert:\localmachine\root -password $pass

You will get a message similar to the one below:

Directory: Microsoft.PowerShell.Security\Certificate::LocalMachine\root
Thumbprint Subject
———- ——-
64AB6D87A6227E650B13299C3AB1B80B0B9452CE O=Root, CN=machine-1, T=AppRecoveryCoreClientCertificate

5. Start the Agent Service
start-service AppAssureAgent