Encryption Problems

[Madadory]

I have 2 partitions on my hard drive and the other day I reformatted the partition that held my os. well, I had encrypted some files using windows on my other partition and I fail to decrypt them before the format. Now, I don't have access to the files. I would like the files back. Any Advice?

[jlreich]

Welcome to the http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif forums.

Wait for one of the others to confirm, but I am pretty sure there is no way to get the data back without the OS that did the encryption. In short you are out of luck. :(

[Sylvander]

Which Windows version?

As an experiment...
I made an image backup of my FAT32 F: partition, formatted it...
And then used the "Un-format" program on the FREE bootable Emergency Boot CD [EBCD] (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485) to unformat the partition.
What file system was in use on your partition?

The 1st time I did it, it renamed the top folders DIR0 & DIR1.
At a 2nd repeated experiment it renamed [a long list of] all the 1st and 2nd level folders in that manner.
All the files were OK.
Hence, you would need to have the means to rename all such as these folders to their correct names [and move them to their correct locations] from outside Windows.
The EBCD "File Manager" can do that for FAT partitions.
The XP "Recovery Console" could do that for NTFS partitions.

[orirunaway]

Hi, I have almost the same situation as yours before. You can read it here and some solutions (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=48026&page=2).

[Paul Komski]

If you can restore the encrypted files you or the windows recovery agent will only be able to regain access to them with the appropriate certificates. If you did not follow the steps detailed for creating and backing up the encryption you will be out of luck unless you can restore the whole installation and then decrypt the encrypted files yourself.

Unformatting with the EBCD or other utilities such as Active@ (http://www.file-recovery.net/soft.htm) may be your only hope. In both cases you may have to rename or reinstate things deleted or renamed in the root folder.

I had encrypted some files using windows on my other partitionIf that version of windows is still functional then if you can recover the files using GDB or similar then I would think that if you can logon as original user in that OS should still be able to access the files.

[Madadory]

To answer Sylvander's question I am using NTFS on a winxp pro system. And thanks everyone for all your help. I'm trying the suggestions right now.