Encryption, HDD, backup problem!

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G

Guest

I'm basically my Uncle's tech support and am a little stumped, along with a
stumped Dell support.
Basscially what happened is ING required him to encrypt all his hard drive
(we used Utimatco, ING's recommended solution). So we installed the
encryption software on his 2 computers. His main one will not boot with the
encryption software. So we reformatted the hardrive, and using our backup
image (from a network hard drive, Acronis software). Took a couple hours and
now when it tries to boot it gives an error about a messed up bootup. We
have called Dell Gold support, used the Windows XP recovery console (fixboot,
fixmbr), along with several other reformats (all full reformat) and image
restores, but no results, we did verify the backup image, so that seems to be
good. What Dell told us is that it is possible we cannot get the encryption
software off our hard drive. Any suggestions, help? Note: The other
computer of his won't boot any more either, so the encryption software has
killed both computers so far.
 
http://americas.utimaco.com/support/

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Utimaco has been absolutely no help, gave us the royal runaround. We even
had Dell try to get in touch with them.
 
You see "an error about a messed up bootup" but don't bother to tell us what
the error is!?
In any case, I suggest you boot from a Windows CD to Recovery Console,
delete the drive partition then repartition and reformat. It sounds likely
that the encryption has affected the MBR.
 
Sorry, don't remeber exactly what the error message, basically in not so many
words that is error though, and I don't have access to the computer
currently. We left it to restore during the night but have not gone back to
work on it yet, my uncle did let me know it did not work, he said same error
message as before.
We have tried what you suggested below, several times, but no luck,
coresponds with what the Dell said, the encryption is probably still on the
hard drive and we are not able to do a low enough leval format.
 
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