What is the folder location of certificate store in win10?

Question

What is the folder path of the certificate store in windows? Meaning, in powershell, I can do something like cd cert:\localmachine, is there a way to navigate to this path via file explorer?

My situation: I deleted some cert from localmachine cert store. This included a cert used by windows for login. Because of that I got locked out of that machine. I mounted the hard drive from the locked out vm to another vm and now I can access the files, including the backup of certs I exported before deleting. My goal is to install cert from that backup to the cert store that lies somewhere in the mounted hard drive. The challenge is I haven't been able to figure where the cert store is located in the hard drive to specify it as a part of import-certificate cmdlet.

In powershell, I am doing something like import-certificate -filepath d:\users\xxxx\desktop\backup.pfx --certstorelocation whatGoesHere for the --certstorelocation, if I use cert:\localmachine\, the certificates are going to be installed to the current os, which is not my goal. I want to be able to specify path to cert store that is somewhere in my mounted harddrive.

Answer 1

There is no way to use custom cert store path in Windows, you should import certifates to existing cert stores.

Check Import-Certificate

cd cert:
PS Cert:\> ls
  Location   : CurrentUser
  StoreNames : {TrustedPublisher, ClientAuthIssuer, Root, TrustedDevices...}
  Location   : LocalMachine
  StoreNames : {TestSignRoot, ClientAuthIssuer, OemEsim, WindowsServerUpdateServices...}

PS Cert:\> cd .\\LocalMachine\
PS Cert:\LocalMachine\> ls

PS Cert:\LocalMachine\> cd .\Root\

Thats it :)