Cannot Connect to a Secured Web Site That Requires a Certificate

ID: Q199215

The information in this article applies to:

SYMPTOMS

When you attempt to connect to a secured Web site that requires a certificate, you may receive the following error message:

HTTP Error 403 403.7 Forbidden: Client certificate required

This error occurs when the resource you are attempting to access requires your browser to have a client Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate that the server recognizes. This is used for authenticating you as a valid user of the resource.

Please contact the Web server's administrator to obtain a valid client certificate.


CAUSE

This problem can occur if you previously tried to connect to the Web site during the Internet Explorer session, but could not. Internet Explorer caches the first attempt to connect to the Web site, and each subsequent attempt to connect uses the cached information.


RESOLUTION

To work around this problem so you do not have to restart your computer before connecting to the Web site, follow these steps in Internet Explorer:

  1. On the View menu, click Internet Options.


  2. Click the Advanced tab.


  3. Under Browsing, click to select the "Browse in a new process" check box.


  4. Click OK, and then quit all instances of Internet Explorer.


If you receive the error message again when you attempt to connect to the Web site, quit and then restart Internet Explorer.


STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.


MORE INFORMATION

For additional information about this error message, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q186812 Error: 403.7 Forbidden: Client Certificate Required

Q190004 Error 403.7 or "Connection to Server Could Not Be Established"

Additional query words: iis 


Keywords          : kberrmsg msiew95 msient msiew98 
Version           : WINDOWS:4.0,4.01,4.01 Service Pack 1
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: January 29, 1999