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I have generated a pair of public/private keys on my Unix installation. I now want to use that pair on my windows 7 installation. How do I Do it?

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  • Is this to be used with filezilla, cygwin, putty?
    – squareborg
    Jan 28, 2013 at 10:20
  • I will need it for a Git setup. I have a remote server that knows my key already. I want windows to use that key. Jan 28, 2013 at 10:49

1 Answer 1

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To answer this question, we really need to know what you intend to use the keys with, but assuming that it's PuTTY or WinSCP:

You need to copy the private key to your Windows machine and put it somewhere safe. Then go to the PuTTY download page (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html) and grab a copy of PuTTYgen.exe. PuTTYgen is for generating PPK pairs in Windows but can also be used to convert *nix private keys to the format used by PuTTY and its derivatives.

Run PuTTYgen, click Conversions->Import key and then open your private key, entering the passphrase if prompted. Finally, click 'Save private key' to save the converted key somewhere safe. If you want, you can delete the *nix version of the private key from your Windows computer.

To use the private key in PuTTY, go to Connection->SSH->Auth. In WinSCP, you add the private key file when you set up a new session or by highlighting an existing one in the list and clicking 'Edit'.

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