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W2K Encryption Recovery

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6 replies

by numbies

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I have a huge problem and hope someone can help:
One of our executives had encryption set on critical folders and his laptop crashed. We forunately had a backup of his data via BackupExec and had to format the HDD.

I have restored the data but cannot recover the encrypted files. I built a W2K Server with Active Directory etc and configured Certificate Services but still could not unencrypt the data as the Administrator.

Any help would be appreciated.

6 replies

by briantruitt

There are three things you can try. First, you can try to take ownership of the folders as the administrator and grant yourself access to the files/folders. Second, you can log on as the administrator and remove the encryption attribute from the folders and set the folder permissions to allow you to access them. Finally, if you were using CA's when the folders were encrypted maybe all you need is recover his EFS keys from the CA's server/backup files or maybe revoke his certificate and give him a new one which will produce a new set of keys that just might work with the restored data if it's still considered his after the restore. Good luck.

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