Q. How can I see what certificates are installed on a Windows computer with PowerShell?
A. Using PowerShell to view certificates is easy. PowerShell has a provider that exposes the certificates store which is part of the pki and security modules, which are loaded automatically as long as you’re on version 3 or greater. You do not need to manually load the modules, they auto-load from PowerShell v3 and above.
To view the certificates in the local users personal certificate store I would use the following:
#Change to the location of the personal certificates
Set-Location Cert:\CurrentUser\My
#Change to the location of the local machine certificates
Set-Location Cert:\LocalMachine\My
#Get the installed certificates in that location
Get-ChildItem | Format-Table Subject, FriendlyName, Thumbprint -AutoSize
#Get the installed certificates from a remote machine
$Srv = "SERVER-HOSTNAME"
$Certs = Invoke-Command -Computername $Srv -Scriptblock {Get-ChildItem "Cert:\LocalMachine\My"}
There is also a cmdlet called Get-Certificate, but don’t be fooled – it’s for requesting and installing certificates, not listing the certificates already installed.
H/T: http://windowsitpro.com/powershell/browse-certificate-store-using-powershell
