February 10, 2009

IIS7 Certificate binding issue

I recently tried installing a certificate into IIS7 on an new Windows 2008 server at work. The import whent well but when I tried to bind a site to use the new certificate I got a dialog box with the following message

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Add Site Binding
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There was an error while performing this operation.

Details: 

A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070520)
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OK   
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(Note: The above text was produced by simply focusing the dialog window and pressing CTRL+C; really neat trick!)

After a lot of debugging/googling I managed to find a solution; you have to check the "Allow this certificate to be exported" box when you import the cert. Really strange and really not good practice but until I find another solution that's the way it has to be. If you've got another solution please comment!