Previous Encryption to Current Ownership

Long story short...

I encrypted a folder on another profile/user. Folder, subfolders and files were Read-Only when encrypted. That profile has been long deleted.

Folder, subfolders and files have the attribute Read-Only unchecked.

But I can not decrypt and access the files. I followed the instructions "How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP" to the letter.

Any suggestions?

 

If you have Partition Magic, you might try converting the partition to a FAT 32. I once accidently locked myself out of a hard drive. I was in total panic. Then I used PM to convert it to a FAT 32 and all the security got removed. I reconvertered back to NTFS. I had to reinstall all the security.

 

Are you sure that the files are ENCRYPTED, not just restricted access via NTFS security?

If so, and that user has been nuked, you are not getting that data back unless you set a recovery agent, or saved the .pfx before you nuked it.

I wish there was a way, but if there was, it would take all the fun out of having encryption in the first place. If your user environment is unstable and standalone, you might consider alternitives, like a stand alone encryption system on a USB keychain drive, or passworded zip files, or even something like pgp.

Best practices for the Encrypting File System
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223316

If all is as you say, I'm sorry you lost data. Check out the article above for some ideas on implementing EFS that would allow you to recover if this happens again.

 

Arie,
I did not export the security certificate at the time. I was ignorant in respect to the security certificates and thought I could undo the encryption if I had control.

RayH,
That sounds like it might work, but I have about 80GB worth of data and the encrypted files are about 1MB. The time to convert to Fat32 and back to NTFS would be pain staking long. I can manage without the files at this time.
I will keep your suggestion in mind if this happens to someone else though.

Ben,
The files were encrypted.
But I can say without any doubt.... Lesson learnt.


Thank you all for the help and the links are bookmarked for future reference.

 

You can always put the drive into a windows 2000 computer, right click on the folder, select security and take ownership of the folder.