Certificate Enrollment Policy creation for Certificate Enrollment Policy Web Service (CEP) fails with error code "WS_E_INVALID_FORMAT".

Assume the following scenario:

• A Certificate Enrollment Policy Web Service (CEP) is implemented in the network.
• An enrollment policy is configured.
• Testing the connection fails with the following error message:

Error: The input data was not in the expected format or did not have the expected value. 0x803d0000 (-2143485952 WS_E_INVALID_FORMAT)

The Certificate Enrollment Web Services (Certificate Enrollment Policy Web Service, CEP, and Certificate Enrollment Web Service, CES) enable the automatic request and renewal of certificates from a certification authority via a Web-based interface. This eliminates the need to contact the certification authority directly via Remote Procedure Call (RPC). For a more detailed description, see the article "Certificate request basics via Certificate Enrollment Web Services (CEP, CES)„.

This error usually occurs when the CEP URL is written incorrectly. A service responds (in this case the IIS default web page, since the entered URL points to it), but it is not the CEP service.

Related links:

• Installing a Certificate Enrollment Web Service (CES)