The user is a member of the domain and her Windows XPP notebook crashes. All files in “My Documents” were encrypted and the private key was not exported. We were able to archive off this folder and restore it on a recovery computer.
Every KB we read and tried and is not successful. We engaged Microsoft Professional Support service and the verdict is:
“Unfortunately, your issue of derypting a file which was encrypted on a user’s laptop cannot be resolved. We do not have the original certificate used to encrypt the file, so we cannot decrypt it.”
We cannot copy or restore these files to FAT32 partitions. We cannot read them from another O/S. We tried the Elcomsoft “Advanced EFS Data Recovery” tool and it shows all the files were undecriptable. We’re running out of ideas. Are there any other chainsaw approach to cut through this EFS and recover the files?
Peter Enge, mcse
