Unable to login after encryption

[amk.mesbah]

Hello All,

I encrypted all the folders on a W2K SP4 notebook hard drive, including
C:\WINNT, and then rebooted. However, after entering my login
information Windows hangs at the "Loading your personal settings" and
refuses to load. The machine only has one account, which is the
administrator.

Since this problem occured after the first reboot after encryption, I
did not get a chance to back up the certificate. Is there any way to
get W2K to boot up?

Thanks in advance

A. Mesbah

 

[amk.mesbah]

I've hooked up the offending hard drive to another system and found
that the following folders were NOT encrypted:

C:\WINNT
C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer
C:\Program Files\NetMeeting
C:\Program Files\Outlook Express
C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player
C:\Program Files\WindowsNT

In essence, all the system folders, as expected since I suppose the
certificates are not available during login.

However, C:\Documents and Settings is entirely encrypted. Does W2K
require anything in there when logging in?

I also have an Emergency Recovery Disk available. Would attempting to
repair the volume using the W2K CD and ERD damage the certificate?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ahmed Mesbah]

Managed to fix this. W2K will hang at the "Loading your personal
settings" window if autoexec.bat is encrypted. Accessing the hard drive
from another machine and renaming/deleting autoexec.bat fixes the
problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=269397

AM