*sigh* what a pain.. the Moto Q and Windows Mobile devices for that matter can’t install CA certificates without some form of assistance from an administrator.

Thankfully the Moto Q in question was on Telus and they haven’t taken the time out to cripple the phones like Verizon and Sprint have. I seriously pity the owners of phones from those carriers.

Without going into a rant, here’s the quick and dirty which is probably more applicable than Microsoft’s KB article 841060 titled “How to add root certificates to Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone and to Windows Mobile 2002 Smartphone.”

So you’ll need ActiveSync installed on a computer as well as a cable to connect the phone (or Moto Q) to that particular computer. After that, cancel any ActiveSync settings… you won’t need them,

1. Explore the phone, see if there is a folder called ‘STORAGE’ at the root of the phone. If not, create it.
2. Grab the CA Cert (I’ve included Starfield’ CA Certificate (in a zip file) since that’s the CA we use to issue certs), HERE.
3. Drop the (unzipped) file in the ‘STORAGE’ directory
4. Download SmartPhoneAddCert.exe from Microsoft HERE or from HERE.
5. Unzip or extract the SPAddCert.exe program from the archive (or self-extracting archive if you got it from Microsoft) and drop it into the ‘STORAGE’ directory you may have created earlier
6. Open up file manager on the handheld and launch SPAddCert
7. Choose the CA Cert that you initially intended to install and reboot the device after installation

Voila! You can now resume doing whatever you needed to do in the first place.

PS – no need to install intermediate certificates – just root certificates for the Moto Q.