Unable to acces enrypted files

[Danny]

I had forgotten the password for my account, so i used
another account to change the password. Doing this lost
my certificate or whatever it is that lets me acces those
files, i had not backed up this and i have no data
recovery agents so i cannot access these files and i have
no back-ups of these files so i cannot replace them, i
tried using the cipher command as well and it said it was
denied access to the files. Is there anyway to bypass the
encryption or force a decryption?

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

I had forgotten the password for my account, so i used
another account to change the password. Doing this lost
my certificate or whatever it is that lets me acces those
files, i had not backed up this and i have no data
recovery agents so i cannot access these files and i have
no back-ups of these files so i cannot replace them, i
tried using the cipher command as well and it said it was
denied access to the files. Is there anyway to bypass the
encryption or force a decryption?

Unfortunately, if you did not back-up the encryption key or the recovery
agent and are not on a domain, the files are as good as gone. This must be
accomplished while you have access to the files. If you have not already
done so, it is now too late. EFS is very good at what it does and there is
no back door.

The only other possibility, and I'm not positive about this, would be if you
could remember the original password for that account.

 

[Danny]

-----Original Message-----


Unfortunately, if you did not back-up the encryption key or the recovery
agent and are not on a domain, the files are as good as gone. This must be
accomplished while you have access to the files. If you have not already
done so, it is now too late. EFS is very good at what it does and there is
no back door.

The only other possibility, and I'm not positive about this, would be if you
could remember the original password for that account.

--
Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User


.

Is there no way to make another certificate with the same
key?

 

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

No, that world defeat the whole purpose. You do have the option of trying
file recovery applications which you might find doing a search of Google.
These are usually for situations other than encryption however. There are
also file recovery services, you can find them in the back pages of most PC
magazines. I would think they would be able to handle this type of
situation.