EFS issue...somewhat complicated

  • Thread starter Thread starter Roger
  • Start date Start date
R

Roger

XP Pro with SP 2 installed. No domain, no recovery agent
Using third party authentication program to sign on to the computer (rohos
welcome). A test of the security in Rohos appears to have corrupted my
user profile.... The test was a forced change (through a different
administrator) of my windows password to confirm that the USB key could not
log into my account. To regain access to my account, I had to do a second
forced change to reset my password back to normal. The situation I am
trying to fix is as follows:

Issue:

Computer recognizes I have permission to open the encrypted files
(permission) and am listed as authorized to access the file on the
encryption properties screen (I have at least one decryption key), but the
computer is acting as though I am not authorized. It wont decrypt the file
or allow me to turn off the encryption attribute. I keep getting error
messages that say access denied.

Any suggestions on how to fix this would be appreciated.

Roger
 
It sounds like a problem with your EFS private key. Hopefully you made a
backup to external media before this all happened. Try using the mmc snapin
for user certificates and go to the personal/certificates folder to see if
your EFS certificate is there and it shows that the private key is also
present. To really see if the private key is intact try to export it. If you
can not or get some error message then the private key may have become
corrupted and it may be worthwhile to run Check Disk on the computer
selecting the option to automatically fix file system errors. Also check to
see that you have full control permissions to the folder/file.

If the private key is there and can be exported it may not be the correct
private key. You can compare the thumbprint of the certificate to what is
shown in the file properties for the EFS file and they must match or it can
not decrypt the file. If you are unsure of the existence of the private key
download the free limited trial version of the EFS recovery program from
Elcomsoft as it will try to find any EFS private keys and then you must
enter the proper password for the private key to be able to decrypt files
though the trial version will only decrypt small files. --- Steve

http://www.elcomsoft.com/aefsdr.html --- Elcomsoft
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;223316
 
Hi Roger!

Could you please tell me more in inprivate about problems that you
encountered in Rohos Welcome software ?

Thanks!
 
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