Cannot decrypt files

  • Thread starter Thread starter Evan
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Evan

My problem is with a folder on a Windows 2000 server with
NTFS file system that contains 2 files I cannot decrypt.
The folder contains about 100 files which are decrypted,
but there are 2 bat files that generate an error message
which says Access is Denied. I found an article KB264064
which refers to the problem, but it doesn't seem to
resolve the problem (and to be honest - I find the wording
to be sort of confusing and ambiguous). Is there anything
else I can do to force these two files to be decrypted??
 
Starting with the most obvious:
- Do you have permission-wise access to the files? If not, take ownership.
- Do the files have the system attribute? If so, remove it.
- Do you have a certificate that was used to encrypt the files? Efsinfo
(link below) can give you the "thumbprints" of the certs used to encrypt.
Open the Certificates MMC snapin and look for any certs with those
thumbprints in your Personal store.

If you don't have any of the "Users" certificates, see if you (or the
administrator) has a "Recovery Agents" cert.

If you have at least one of the certs matching your encrypted file, you
probably also have its private key (this post is already getting long - I'll
skip those details unless you need them later), so you should be able to
decrypt.

If you can't find one of those certificates or you only have the certificate
but not its private key, the data is lost.


efsinfo:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/efsinfo-o.asp

A KB on EFS file recovery - not a lot of info, but the links from it may be
useful:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;255742&sd=tech
 
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