I was following the steps in Scott Hanselman's blog post describing how to create a certificate authority and code signing certificate for PowerShell scripts.

Initially, I created the certificate authority and a personal certifcate and used it to sign a powershell script successfully. All went as described in the blog post.

The problem starts (as most do) when I did something that was (probably) stupid, although it seemed reasonable at the time.

I wanted to start over and repeat the process again with a clean slate, so from the mmc certificates snap-in console, I deleted the personal certificate and the certificate authority I created previously. After that any time I try to use makecert, (just as I did the first time around), makecert either hangs or faults (which prompts to end or debug).

Did I hose something up by deleting via the certificates snap-in? It didn't complain or warn me that it could be potentially hazardous. Is this just coincidence and something else entirely could be hosed?

I have Event Log entries from the times when makecert crashed, which all look very similar; here is one:

   Log Name:      Application
   Source:        Application Error
   Date:          8/5/2009 3:55:04 PM
   Event ID:      1000
   Task Category: (100)
   Level:         Error
   Description:
   Faulting application makecert.exe, version 6.0.6000.16384, 
   time stamp 0x4545910b, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 6.0.6002.18005, 
   time stamp 0x49e03821, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00067409, 
   process id 0xe58, application start time 0x01ca160efdf30625.

Anyone have any ideas as to what exactly caused this and/or what I can do to fix it.

I'm on 32-bit Vista Enterprise w/SP2.