Install a pfx certificate in a users store in Windows using WiX

by

Please, can someone provide me with a WiX snippet or solution for the mentioned scenario. I need to include the pfx file in the WiX msi and the user will download my msi to his machine via the internet explorer and Click install and I need also the certificate to be installed on his machine.

You need the Certificate element. It is part of the IIS extension for wix, but can be used for non-IIS related installations also.

You need to

  1. declare a prefix for the iis namespace, for
    example like this in the root Wix element:

    <Wix xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi'
   xmlns:iis='http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/IIsExtension'>

  2. Embed the PFX file as a binary
    stream in your install package. Add
    a Binary element under the
    product element like this:

    <Binary Id="MyCertificateBinaryStream" 
   SourceFile="c:/path/to/mycertificate.pfx" />

  3. Declare a component with a <iis:Certificate> element, for
    example like this. Look at the
    documentation, you need to fill in some
    more attributes. Note that you don’t need CertficatePath if you use the BinaryKey attribute.

    <Component Id="MyCertificateComponent" Guid="MY-GUID-HERE">
   <iis:Certificate Id="MyCertificate"
      BinaryKey="MyCertificateBinaryStream"
      ... some more attributes ...                  
   />
</Component>

  4. Activate the IIS extension by adding
    the option -ext WixIISExtension
    option when invoking the wix command line tools. If you use visual studio, this is just a matter of adding a reference in your wix project to WixIISExtension.

Leave a Comment