Stephan said:
Hello,
I have Win XP Pro SP2 on drive C and programs and documents on drive D,
both
NTFS. On drive D I have encrypted documents but since I reinstalled Win I
cannot access them anymore or remove the encryption on those files. Can
anyone help?
This is a very common problem. Unfortunately, you will probably not be able
to recover those files, unless you have or can undelete the files in the
C:\documents and settings\ folder for the user account used to encrypt the
files, or the computer was joined to a Windows server domain and you have a
server administrator who can help.
If those user profiles have been deleted, there are some file undelete
utilities that might help you recover some of the files from the old user
profiles.
If you have or can undelete the files, you can call Microsoft and for a fee
they will help you recover the files. There is a manual process at
www.beginningtoseethelight.org that might help you recover the files for
free, if you are PC saavy.
Unfortunately, using any kind of encryption without backing up your
encryption keys is a very good way to lose your data forever. And if you
don't set up Windows EFS file encryption well, it might not be as secure as
you think.
