Windows stopped prompting for smart card

Question

I use a smart card to access military websites and Outlook (OWA).

Normally I'll put my card in, go to the site, get prompted to select which certificate I want, then enter my PIN.

Yesterday morning it was working fine, but later in the day my system stopped prompting me for a certificate. I restarted the browser but there was no change. I restarted the laptop but again no change. I tried clearing cookies and cache, SSL state, even removing the certificates from the Content tab of Internet options.

Today I brought my other laptop to work and it worked fine all morning, prompting me as necessary as I visited the sites I needed to. This afternoon the second laptop also stopped prompting me for my certificate even after restarting the browser.

I've tried using IE, Edge, and Chrome, but none of them bring up the certificate prompt when visiting a site that requires a CAC (smartcard).

Both laptops use Windows 10 64-bit. Chrome is 84.0.4147.105 (Official Build) (64-bit). IE is 11.959.18362.0. Edge is 44.18362.449.0.

Answer 1

Hi,
Have you checked if the smart card service is running when the UI box did not prompted with Smart Card?

To check if Smart Card service is running
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL, and then click Start Task Manager.
In the Windows Task Manager dialog box, click the Services tab.
Click the Name column to sort the list alphabetically, and then type s.
In the Name column, look for SCardSvr, and then look under the Status column to see if the service is running or stopped.

To restart Smart Card service
Run as administrator at the command prompt.
If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Yes.
At the command prompt, type net stop SCardSvr.
At the command prompt, type net start SCardSvr.

Please also check if the smart reader is working well:
Navigate to Computer.
Right-click Computer, and then click Properties.
Under Tasks, click Device Manager.
In Device Manager, expand Smart card readers, select the name of the smart card reader you want to check, and then click Properties.

Note:If the smart card reader is not listed in Device Manager, in the Action menu, click Scan for hardware changes.

Thanks,
Jenny

Answer 2

I am having the same issue. I located the service and tried to stop it. However, it restarts automatically even if a reader is not connected. I even tried to kill the PID via cmd line but got the same results.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 3

I know this is old, but just in case other people are still getting this problem and come across this page, something that has worked for me is repairing the PIV driver and then restarting the computer.