Professional Windows® PowerShell

16.2. The Certificate Namespace

The certificate namespace contains certificate objects whose names are unique in that namespace. The certificate namespace is exposed as the cert drive.

To navigate to the cert drive from any other Windows PowerShell drive, simply type:

cd cert:

As with other PowerShell drives, ensure you include the final colon character when specifying the desired drive or an error message will be displayed. Once in the cert: drive, you can, as in other Windows PowerShell drives, use the get-childitem cmdlet to explore the content of the drive.

The cert drive has two folders inside it, LocalMachine and CurrentUser. To see those, type the following command when Cert:\ is the current location:

get-childitem

Switch to the CurrentLocation folder using this command:

set-location CurrentUser

or:

cd CurrentUser

then type:

get-childitem

or:

dir

and you will see the second level folders shown in Figure 16-7. Notice the My folder, which is where the certificate you will create later in this chapter will be stored.

Figure 16.7. Figure 16-7

NOTE

When working with the cert drive from the Windows PowerShell command line, be aware that it does not always immediately update with newly created certificates. Opening a new Windows PowerShell command shell causes it to recognize the newly created certificate.