can't decrypt file....help?

I recently reformatted my C drive and re-installed XP onto it. Before doing so, I moved some files from my C drive to my D drive for backup. I guess I accidentally encrypted these files along the way (still not sure how I managed to do this).

Now here's my dilemma. I can't decrypt these files now since the users/certificates aren't matching. I've browsed the windows help & support along with various web threads/advice and nothing works. I don't have any copies of the encrytion keys as they were all wiped from my C drive when I reformatted. All I have are these files which I can't access. No n matter what I seem to do.

The encrypted file(s) that I'm trying to access are very important pieces of work that many weeks of time went into.

Any advice? or any way I can just change my comp name to match that of the previous designated user who could transparently access the file..and if so how do I go about doing that?

I know enough about computing but I'm definately no expert so excuse me if I'm missing something obvious or simply aren't "getting it". Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm quite frustrated :(

What happens when you try to open the files? the exact error message?

Can you let us know what the file names are to give us some idea what encrypted them in the first place?

when I try to open it it says "Access denied"

the files are .fla flash 8 files..

i found this post on here which sounds alot like what happened to me... I hope this is not the case though and there is some hope yet...



EFS (Encrypted File System) for XP Pro

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I am posting this here, in Tech to Tech because I need a good answer fast

Ok, I think I'm screwed, but let's give it a shot anyway. . .

- I had XP Pro installed on a drive with 2 partitions, 5gigs each.
- Both partitions were NTFS.
- My system and boot partition was C: and all data and such was stored on D:
- I encrypted a directory on the D: drive using the standard XP EFS.
- Later, XP got corrupted so I wiped the C: drive and performed a clean install of XP. I still had my D: drive with all my data, etc.

Now I can't access my encrypted data on the D: drive! I have heard of something called a Recovery Agent, but I'm not sure if you can create one AFTER THE FACT. Basically, all certificates are lost, of course, because it's a different OS.

Am I screwed, or is there some way to decrypt this data?

Thanks!

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I think you may be screwed.

Windows creates a recovery key for you and by default the Administration account is configured for the Recovery Agent. Since the drive was wiped, the key and the Agent are gone. If there is a way around this I would like to know.


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Sorry to say but Deity is right. The MS KB says so <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q255742" target="_blank">here</a>

My suggestion for the future is to leave your data partition in fat32 format for this ver reason. If you have an sensitive data that you want encrypted then put it on your system partition. Just my 0.02.
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there are also some word docs and pdf's that won't open as well..I've heard of software that can decrypt these type of files..are there any free fullv ersions out there that may work as a plan b??

Try the steps in this MSKB article first..you may just need to take ownership of the files