Unencrypting files on old Win2k drive

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I had a hard drive crash at work, and did have the drive professionally
recovered. I have a copy of the recovered image which I have been using to
restore things which weren't backed-up (most was). In my effort, I am
occaisonally coming across a file that has the Windows Encryption attribute
set. (I have no idea why I've only found a few files - most have been C++
source or header files that I created, and other files in the same folder,
from the same project are not encrypted). For all the reasons listed previous
I can't un-encrypt them. Now that I've found some of these files, I even went
back to some of my pre-crash backups, and lo and behold, those files were
encrypted. The old drive had Win2k on it, IT set up the replacement with XP.

Since I do have the recovered data from the old drive, on my backup drive,
I'm assuming that the encrption information from the old configuration is
deeply buried in there somewhere. Is there some way to extract for the old
drive data what I need to decrypt the files???

So, I think have the "key" data (I hope that might have been properly
recovered), how do I 1) Find it, and 2) Apply it within the context of my
"new" configuration to allow decryption of the files????

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
 
Mike Campfield said:
I had a hard drive crash at work, and did have the drive professionally
recovered. I have a copy of the recovered image which I have been using to
restore things which weren't backed-up (most was). In my effort, I am
occaisonally coming across a file that has the Windows Encryption
attribute
set. (I have no idea why I've only found a few files - most have been C++
source or header files that I created, and other files in the same folder,
from the same project are not encrypted). For all the reasons listed
previous
I can't un-encrypt them. Now that I've found some of these files, I even
went
back to some of my pre-crash backups, and lo and behold, those files were
encrypted. The old drive had Win2k on it, IT set up the replacement with
XP.

Since I do have the recovered data from the old drive, on my backup drive,
I'm assuming that the encrption information from the old configuration is
deeply buried in there somewhere. Is there some way to extract for the old
drive data what I need to decrypt the files???

So, I think have the "key" data (I hope that might have been properly
recovered), how do I 1) Find it, and 2) Apply it within the context of my
"new" configuration to allow decryption of the files????

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
Click to expand...

if you've got the hard drive image, cna this be copied to a hard drive and
booted from? This should give you access to the private key.
 
Thanks, but it wasn't a sector for sector image that was recovered. More
like a copy of everything on the original drive (minus a very few things that
were corrupted). Not sure if I can do as you suggest in that case, but I
don't think so.

I'm hoping that there is some way to extract the key. The more I think
about it though, it seems that if I'm not "logged in" to that OS on the
drive, that maybe I won't be able to get it. Still I'm hoping....
 
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