Find Encryption Key File

[Guest]

I have 2 computers that run Windows XP Pro SP2 and both HDD are formated
NTFS. One of my computers crashed and I can't even boot up in safe mode. I
moved the hard drive to my other computer so I can copy some important files
to the computer that is working. Some of the files I want to copy are
encrypted and I can not decrypt the files. Is there a way that I can decrypt
files and back them up to the computer that is working? Is there a way to
copy/export the encryption key that resides on the HDD I am trying to recover
files from?

 

[Steven L Umbach]

If you have not formatted the system drive on the "crashed" computer and it
sounds like you did not your best bet would be to try and revive that
operating system by booting it from the install cdrom and doing an
upgrade/repair install being sure that you do NOT select any option to
format the drive which an upgrade/repair install will not. If that does not
work you will have to try and copy the user profile that was used to encrypt
the files to the other operating system and then using something like EFS
recovery from Elcomsoft to try and recover your files. Their free version
will let you know if the private key can be found and accessed but you need
to buy the full version to recover all your files. --- Steve

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341 --- XP
upgrade install.
http://www.elcomsoft.com/aefsdr.html

 

[Guest]

I will try and do a repair install like you suggested. Just in case that does
not work, how would I go about retriving my user profile?

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Since you have two computers the easiest way would probably be to put the
"crashed" operating system hard drive into your other computer as
secondary/slave drive and then see if it can access that hard drive from the
other operating system and find your user profile under documents and
settings on that drive. Other possibilities would be a parallel install of
the operating system to the "crashed" computer making sure that you do NOT
format the system drive and would give you dual boot operating systems, or
booting from an operating system that is bootable from a cdrom such as
Bart's PE that you can create yourself. All this assumes that the hard drive
in the "crashed" computer is operational and the problem is with the
installation of the operating system on the "crashed" computer. --- Steve

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ --- Bart's PE

 

[Jerscy]

I see... I have this similar problem when my pc crashed. I reinstalled
Win XP Pro SP2 without reformatting the disk. However, I deleted the
parallel folders. Is there any way for me to recover the private key?

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Realistically not without a copy of the user profile or a backup of your EFS
private key from a password protected .pfx file. You may however try to use
a file recovery program to find and restore the needed profile files if they
have not been overwritten by the operating system. The needed folder is in
the user profile under documents and settings\username\application
data\Microsoft\crypto. If you can find and restore it you could try using
EFS recovery program from Elcomsoft to see if it can allow you access to
your EFS private key. --- Steve