IX509Enrollment::InstallResponses Method Failed on Windows Server 2016

This is only a quick post on a recent issue I met, that the COM API of Certenroll.h failed miserably on Windows Server 2016, with an error code of “0x80071771” (The specified file could not be encrypted).

The error code itself makes no sense, and the same code runs fine on Windows Server 2008 R2 (didn’t test other Windows versions).

I didn’t plan to open a bug report to Microsoft yet, but was able to find an alternative way to install the response from CA, by calling certreq command line utility via Process.Start . I know that looks ugly, but certreq works flawlessly with the same response data, which indicates that the error comes from Certenroll.h API.

You can learn more about certreq from Microsoft.