How to Remove a Certificate stored within the Trusted Root Certification Authorities Store on a Local Computer Running Windows 10

Reading time: 2 minutes

I was trialling software that required to install its own certificate within the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store yesterday. After some time playing with it, I decided to uninstall it along with its certificate. I thought it should be a straightforward process as I was used to managing certificates within the Personal Certificates store and I did not imagine for a second that this would be any different. However, when I went into Control Panel > Internet Options > Content > Certificates > Trusted Root Certification Authorities and looked for a remove option next to the certificate I wanted to get rid of, I was surprised to find out that such an option is not available for this particular store.

After a few minutes trawling through Google for a solution, I could not find a resolution that exactly matched my situation, so I decided to scratch my head a little and came up with a solution that worked for me, hopefully it should work for you, too.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any trouble getting this to work on your machine.

In order to remove a certificate installed within the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store on a machine running Windows 10 outside a domain, you need to do the following:

  • Make sure that you are logged in as an administrator or your account has an administrative privileges.
  • Open the new start menu or press WIN+Q and within the search box that pops up, type MMC.
  • In the newly opened Management Console window, go to File > Add / Remove Snap-in or press CTRL+M to open the window directly
  • From the newly opened window, from the Available Snap-ins list, select the Certificates snap-in and click on Add.
  • In the next Window, when it asks you: This snap-in will always manage certificates for:, choose the third option: Computer account and click Next.
  • In the next step: Select the computer you want this snap-in to manage., choose the option Local computer: (the computer this console is running on) and click on the Finish button.
  • After clicking Finish, you should be returned back to the previous window and you should see the Certificates snap-in within the Selected snap-ins list. Click on the Ok button to close the window and you should be returned to the main application window.
  • Within the Console Root tree view, you should be able to find the snap-in you just added: Certificates (Local Computer), click to expand it and then select Trusted Root Certification Authorities > Certificates
  • Now you should be able to see the list with all of your certificates stored within the selected store. Right click on the desired certificate and press Delete to delete it off your system.
  • Please be very careful not to inadvertently delete the wrong certificate or some of the certificates that come preinstalled with Windows, as these changes are irreversible and can easily make your computer unusable.

  • When finished, exit the console without saving your changes and you are done. Your certificate should now be deleted from the Trusted Root Certification Authorities Store.

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