Microsoft Warns Not To Delete Root Certificate

Later this month a Microsoft root certificate will be expiring and Microsoft warns that deleting it could cause issues in Windows. It was reported earlier this month that the ‘Microsoft Root Authority’ certificate in Microsoft’s Trusted Root Certification Authorities would expire on the 31st of this month.

There are still newer root certificates that will not be expiring anytime soon, however there are users that are concerned that the expiring certificate could prevent software or hardware to stop functioning correctly.

There is a support page that shows the trusted root certificates that Windows needs. In this support page Microsoft explains that trusted root certificates should not be deleted as they could affect the way Windows runs or cause the PC to fail.

“However, the root certificates that are listed in the Necessary and trusted root certificates section in this article are required for the operating system to operate correctly. Because removal of the following certificates may limit functionality of the operating system or may cause the computer to fail, you should not remove them, ”

Microsoft did state that expired certificates should be kept as they will be used for backwards compatibility. “Some certificates that are listed in the previous tables have expired. However, these certificates are necessary for backward compatibility. Even if there is an expired trusted root certificate, anything that was signed by using that certificate before the expiration date requires that the trusted root certificate is validated. As long as expired certificates are not revoked, they can be used to validate anything that was signed before their expiration,”