Import-PFXCertificate: The specified network password is not correct

Question

I've got some pretty simple code I'm trying to troubleshoot. The environment is an Azure Windows Server 2012 machine, and I'm logged in as a domain admin running a Powershell console with Administrator privileges.

I'm just trying to Import-PFXCertificate from a known location but it will not accept the network password.

Here's the code.

$SecurePWD = ConvertTo-SecureString -String 'iW@nt2die' -AsPlainText -Force
Import-PFXCertificate -Password $SecurePWD -CertStoreLocation "Cert:\LocalMachine\Root" -FilePath "C:\Certs\TestCert.pfx"

When I run this beautiful block of code, with the password being absolutely correct (I tested by logging in using the password), it greets me with this error:

Import-PFXCertificate : The specified network password is not correct.

WHYYYY.

I've tried escaping out the @, but that doesn't do anything. I've tried crying, but the computer is completely unmoved by my tears.

Answer 1

I know this post is a little older, but as I saw that some people commented recently, i wanted to share our solution.

We had a similar problem when we tried to replace our SSL certificate by a new one. We experienced the same error message but while using the method Get-PfxData, not Import-Pfx but I think it's the same issue.

The problem was that our new Pfx-Password contained a dollar sign $ which is reserved in Powershell to be variable. After escaping the dollar sign with a quote (`) it worked.

So if the password was XyZaBc$DeF we needed to use XyZaBc`$DeF.

That solved the problem in our case.

Answer 2

Per documentation for Import-PfxCertificate, the -Password parameter is for the password of the certificate and not the user to login with.

-Password - Specifies the password for the imported PFX file in the form of a secure string.