You receive a "Failed to generate the certificate request" error message when you try create a certificate request in IIS (908572)

SYMPTOMS

When you try to create a certificate request in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), you may receive an error message that is similar to the following:

Failed to generate the certificate request. Access is denied.

CAUSE

This issue occurs if the administrator who tries to create the certificate request does not have Full Control permissions on the files and the subfolders in the following folder:

\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, grant the administrator account Full Control on all files and subfolders in the MachineKeys folder. To do this, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Run, type "\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\", and then click OK.
Right-click MachineKeys, and then click Properties.
On the Security tab, click Administrator or click the administrator group account you want, click to select the check box to enable Full Control permissions, and then click OK.

REFERENCES

For more information about the default permissions for the MachineKeys folders in Microsoft Windows 2000 and in Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

278381 Default permissions for the MachineKeys folders

For more information about default permissions and user rights in IIS 6.0, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

812614 Default permissions and user rights for IIS 6.0

For more information about how to set required NTFS file system permissions and user rights for an IIS 5.0 Web server, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

271071 How to set required NTFS file system permissions and user rights for an IIS 5.0 Web server