Chef cert being stored in the windows OS cert store issue.

Version:

23.2.1028

Environment:

Windows 10 / 11

Scenario:

Pushing a policy to the

Steps to Reproduce:

Install Chef Workstation on 23.2.1028 on a Windows 11 system
Push a policyfile to the Chef Infra server with a command like chef push dev .\base.lock.json
Do not run Chef from a Powershell session with Administrator elevated privileges.

Expected Result:

To not get a warning that "Hive and values not preset in registry".
To not get an error about Access is Denied on Win32::Registry::Error

Actual Result:

PS C:\Users\butler\repos\snohio\policyfiles> chef push dev .\base.lock.json
[2023-02-14T09:27:54-05:00] WARN: Authentication Hive and values not present in registry, creating them now
Error: Failed to upload policy to policy group dev
Reason: (Win32::Registry::Error) Access is denied.

And if running with Admin privileges:

PS C:\Users\butler\repos\snohio\policyfiles> chef push dev .\base.lock.json
[2023-02-14T09:59:42-05:00] WARN: Authentication Hive and values not present in registry, creating them now
Uploading policy base_win_choco (c83e387e32) to policy group dev
Using    chef-client         1.4.1  (977e300d)
Using    chef_client_updater 3.12.3 (4a3c5a1d)

Start by reproducing chef push dev .\base.lock.json on Windows 10 or 11 without an elevated PowerShell session, then trace the authentication registry warning and Win32::Registry::Error. Done means a non-admin push no longer attempts inaccessible certificate storage and completes without the warning or access-denied error.