UPDATE: I spelled it wrong, but now that so many RSS readers have it, I won’t change the title ;) It’s spelled Thawte, not Thwate, sorry for the confusion.

I browsed to AgiliTrain (my training company) and noticed that the SSL Cert was failing. Not a good thing. But it wasn’t expired, it couldn’t find the Intermediate Certificates that the issuer requires (I am using Thwate certs). I am not sure why this happens. Unfortunately my old GoDaddy certs didn’t need Intermediate Certificates. My next certs won’t either because it has caused me a lot of wasted time and energy.  Much more than I saved going with the cheap Thwate certs.

So the first thing I do when this happens is fire up the SSL Cert Checker that Thwate has:

http://shawnw.me/zQwcp7

This verifies what I already know, the certificate chain to the Intermediate Certificates is broken. So how do I fix it? I delete the Intermediate Certificates and add them back (I didn’t need to add my own certificate, only the Intermediate ones). This link tells you how to install the Intermediate Certs in minute detail:

http://shawnw.me/xpZc4U

But of course, I always one key point: In IIS 7, you must rebind your site to the certificate (or reboot the machine) to have the changes noted. I mention this so you don’t waste your evening like I did (and so I can remember what I did next time it happens!).