hi , my hard disc drives are NTFS , and I encrypted some files . then I
changed windows but now I can not open those files. please guide me.
thanks

"Hamid Moradi" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:238F9FB6-4B17-4813-814D-(E-Mail Removed)...
> hi , my hard disc drives are NTFS , and I encrypted some files . then I
> changed windows but now I can not open those files. please guide me.
> thanks

What change was made to Windows? If you re-installed Windows, that's not
good.

Unless the computer was joined to a Windows domain controller server, or you
still have a copy of the old user profile for the user account that
encrypted the files in the old c:\documents and settings\ folder, those
encrypted files are probably garbage and are lost to you forever. Depending
on how you reinstalled Windows, you could try to recover your EFS encryption
keys by undeleting files from the old c:\documents and settings\ using an
undelete program. There are a variety of free and trial undelete programs
around, at www.download.com and www.google.com for example. Hard drive
recovery firms may be able to undelete files deleted via other methods like
overwriting or reformatting the partition, but they might charge around
$1000 US just to look at the drive, with no guarantees.

If you do have a copy of some of the files from the old c:\documents and
settings\ folder used to encrypt the files, then you can read the
information at www.beginningtoseethelight.org If that doesn't help you, you
can call Microsoft support, at a cost of $100 to $300. Phone numbers are at
www.microsoft.com/support. Microsoft can only help you if you have at least
some of the relevant files from the old user profile.

With Windows EFS encryption or any other encryption technology, it is
absolutely vital that you make a back up copy of your encryption keys, or
else you could lose data forever. How to back up the EFS keys is probably
described in your the Windows help on your computer and at the link below.

More information and links are at:
http://securityadmin.info/faq.asp?efs

--
kind regards,
Karl Levinson, CISSP, CCSA, MCSE [MS MVP]
--------------------------------
Microsoft Security FAQ:
http://securityadmin.info