How to decrypt a file or folders?

[Guest]

Months ago I encrypted some files on my external Hard drive. Recently, I had
to reinstall the OS on my computer because of software issues. Now, I can't
open those files at all. So i tried decrypting the files by going into the
advance attributes box in properties of the files to clear the box that says;
encrypt to secure data. I get a access denied when I try to apply it. Can
someone help me get my files back?

 

[Jim]

Months ago I encrypted some files on my external Hard drive. Recently, I
had
to reinstall the OS on my computer because of software issues. Now, I
can't
open those files at all. So i tried decrypting the files by going into
the
advance attributes box in properties of the files to clear the box that
says;
encrypt to secure data. I get a access denied when I try to apply it.
Can
someone help me get my files back?

The "access denied" message means that you do not own those files any more.
This happened when you reinstalled the OS because XP never reuses a security
ID. There is a Help & Support article about how to take ownership of files
and folders.

Somebody else will have to tell you how to decrypt the files. However,
unless you have a backup copy of the encryption key, you are in serious
trouble.

Jim

 

[Malke]

Months ago I encrypted some files on my external Hard drive. Recently, I had
to reinstall the OS on my computer because of software issues. Now, I can't
open those files at all. So i tried decrypting the files by going into the
advance attributes box in properties of the files to clear the box that says;
encrypt to secure data. I get a access denied when I try to apply it. Can
someone help me get my files back?

Did you really encrypt the files? If you have XP Home, you didn't. If
you have XP Pro, then you might have done. If you really encrypted the
files (and didn't just make them private) and you neglected to back up
your encryption keys, consider the files gone. You might try contacting
Elcomsoft to see if they can help you, although I wouldn't get very
hopeful about it:

http://www.elcomsoft.com/aefsdr.html

If you didn't really encrypt the files with XP Pro's EFS, then you just
need to take ownership of them:

Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP [Q308421] -
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421
How Do I Get the Security tab in Folder Properties? -
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_security_tab.htm


Malke

 

[Vanguard]

in message

Months ago I encrypted some files on my external Hard drive.
Recently, I had
to reinstall the OS on my computer because of software issues. Now, I
can't
open those files at all. So i tried decrypting the files by going
into the
advance attributes box in properties of the files to clear the box
that says;
encrypt to secure data. I get a access denied when I try to apply it.
Can
someone help me get my files back?

Did you export the EFS certificate (to a floppy or CD) so you can now
reuse it to decrypt those files? The EFS cert is unique every time you
create it. Installing a new OS means you wiped out the EFS cert that
was saved in the OS partition. If you didn't save a copy of it, kiss
those files goodbye. There is no backdoor.

 

[Guest]

My situation is a bit different. I got a new hard drive and tried for days in
vain to clone the old one. I kept getting errors. Then, I was no longer able
to boot my computer with the drive, but I had no trouble accessing it in a
different computer. I did a full backup of the drive but naturally couldn't
back up system state data. I installed Windows on the new hard drive and ran
restore to restore my backup. I can't access the one 3kb .txt file that I had
encrypted. So I tried everything I could to get the old hard drive to boot on
the other computer. I did a Windows repair reinstall on it, which took all
night. When it finally booted, Explorer didn't run, but I accessed the file
through Notepad and attempted to decrypt it. I was logged on to my old user
account, but unfortunately, along the way, I had to recover old registry
files from when the computer was new. I used to have a password and probably
did when I encrypted the file. I know the password, so I have no trouble
logging on. But regardless of whether I had a password at the time, the user
account should have the same SID. Yet I still can't decrypt the file.

I restored the registry files from the backup, and I think the registry is
now current, but that didn't help.

Is there a way to retrieve the SID from the files, all of which I have?

Rojo26