Smartcard reader issues  

Not sure if this is the right forum to post this in, but it is an issue with my smart card. I need to use my card to access certain DoD websites, and while trying to access one of them, I get the error "You must have your CAC Certificate loaded to your desktop before proceeding." I can't find anything online about how to do this. I have Build 7100 of Windows 7 x86, an SCR331 USB Reader, all updates installed, and I can access other DoD sites. Any help would be appreciated.

I may not understand your issue correctly but I suspect your certs in the card are not propagated to the cert store on your machine correctly. If so, there could be a few reasons for this:

• Your certpropsvc is not running. Do a "sc query certpropsvc" in a CMD window and check if the service state is "RUNNING". If it is not running, do a "sc start certpropsvc" to start it.
• Right before Win7 RTM, we found an issue with some DoD cards in combination with some Smartcard readers that took minutes to propagate certificates from the card to the cert store on the machine. That has been fixed in RTM. So you may want to insert your card and keep it in for 10-20 minutes. Hopefully, that will allow enough time for the certs to propagate.
• You don't have the right certs in your card to access the site.

Thanks.

The Certificate Propagation service is running and and set to Automatic in the Services Snap-In on MMC. The certificates are also loaded into the store under Personal/Certificates. And I am able to access the site with my CAC while on the computers on the base I work at, just not from my home PC.

When you said the certs are loaded into the store on the PC, do you mean the work PC or the home PC. If you can't access the site from your home PC and the cert store of your home PC already contains the proper certs, then I don't know why and who is complaining you don't have the proper cert.

The certs are loaded on my home PC. When I try to access the site, it can't even find the certs. It's telling me the certs have to be loaded to the desktop in order to continue.

Then you need to figure out who's complaining. Look at the Windows title of the complaining dialogue. I wonder if it is Windows complaining or some 3rd party apps.

Its the site I am trying to access. Here is what comes up:

The page at https://www.my.af.mil/ says:
You must have your CAC Certificate loaded to your desktop before proceeding.

Instructions for installing your Certificate can be found on page 3 of the CAC User's Guide.

This document can be found under Membership Information >> CAC User's Guide.

But the User's Guide doesn't give any instruction on how to do this.

I am afraid I cannot help you there. You may want to contact your IT department regarding this issue.

When using a CAC with ActiveCard Gold 6.2 I have found that I don't need to install the driver for the card itself. All of the sites I need to go to work fine as long as the driver for the reader is installed.

I disabled the "Smart Card" device in device manager to keep it from trying to install at each restart and everything works like a champ.