http://tinyurl.com/3aw7
And belatedly here is what you should have done to save your Encryption key it a good lesson none the less though a bit of a nasty one as well.
http://tinyurl.com/orpmf
Now what many people are unaware of is that before any Encryption System can be released the Government [b]Must Have[/b] the ability to break the encryption so they can recover the data possibly for evidence in Court Proceedings so while it's hard for the average Joe to do there is a [b]Back Door Available.[/b]
When you use Encryption the files stay encrypted whenever you move them about and even if you had of backed up all of your Data the Files would still be encrypted no matter the format of the drive that they where copied to even a Nix Drive would store them as Encrypted from the original Windows Source. The reason that you could read these files is that you where working off the original computer with the [b]Encryption Key[/b] so the encryption was effectively Transparent to you.
Now the easy answer to your current dilemma is to approach someone working for the [b]Federal Crime Authorities[/b] and they'll be able to break the encryption in a matter of seconds but for some strange reason they don't hand out this information as it's fairly useful to them again for fairly obvious reasons.
There is another possibility here [b]Get My Data Back[/b] is a company which was setup by several retired [b]Fed Data Recovery Specialists[/b] so they have the knowledge and ability to break the encryption though they may not have the motivation but are worth a try here
http://tinyurl.com/rmvrv
Actually the person from MS gave you some very good advice as any decent Hacker will know the Back Door into the Encryption bypassing method and will be able to recover your data and most likely do it for free into the bargain though as they break things for fun you never actually know if they'll keep a copy and do with it as they please. However you may find someone who wants the [b]Bragging Rights[/b] who is interested in performing the recovery.
Now I've never actually broken the encryption on any product to recover data but it is in Theory possible to perform I would recommend starting [b]Hacking for Dummies[/b] as a starting point and work forward from there.
As the data is already scrambled I don't think that using something like Knoppix will actually do anything but keep coping garbage admittedly a perfect copy of the garbage but garbage none the less.
Now if you had performed a Backup and at the same time backed up the Encryption Key which is a [b]Must Do[/b] item you wouldn't be in the predicament that you are in now as you could use the Encryption Key to recover your data and turn it from Garbage to readable Data once again. The fact that you have 10 years worth of Data Encrypted I think is marvellous and borders on the unbelievable as that's a long time for any computer program to be running and even longer for a computer as you must have changed it at least once if not more in the meantime. Do you still have the working old computer? If you do the [b]Encryption Key[/b] will be there and will have been transfered along with your data so you could recover it from there quite easily and have your data back to normal easily.
While it is a [b]Dumb Thing to do[/b] it is also a fairly common thing to do by many who don't know any better and think that they are making their system more secure. [b]The Really Dumb Thing[/b] that you have done here is not to research your procedures for a proper Backup and you haven't been keeping any proper Backup in place which is something that you should [b]Change Immediately![/b]
If you wish to use any form of [b]Encryption[/b] you should be at the very least using an [b]Image of the Boot Drive[/b] to restore from as that keeps everything that you need in place and gives you at only a small cost an easy and fast recovery method.
Whenever I run into domestic situations who have turned on the Encryption I immediately save their data and turn off the encryption and I also do this even in small business that I do work for as the costs involved in recovering the encryption key is just so expensive as not to be worth the cost in most cases.
This reminds me of a One Man Show who I built a computer for and told him to Save All His Data regularly. Well he insisted that he was backing up his data and when the HDD failed an old one from his previous computer as he was too cheap to spring for the $100.00 drive he lost all of his data but for the Company Financial Records which was what he was religiously backing up after every entry session. He didn't seem to grasp that he had other data on the drive that he wanted to keep. But on the other side of the coin he did save about $25.00 when I eventually had to fit a new HDD to the computer and he passed up the opportunity to get one of the data recovery houses to recover all his data as it was only going to cost at a minimum of 3K and possibly more to get all his photos and the like back.
So the easy answer is if you know someone who works for the Feds who has access to the [b]Computer Crimes Side of things[/b] you can ask them to make your Encrypted files usable, or you can start reading up on breaking Encryption Keys and find some of the tools that are used to hack these Keys. If you get lucky you may even find the back Door into the Files and recover them all. But I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for a [b]Lucky Break.[/b]
By the way don't feel bad about doing a [b]Dumb Thing[/b] as we all manage to do [b]Dumb Things[/b] during our lives my worst mistake was to start working with computers and it's something that I've never recovered from though a close second would be using MS Software in the form of OS's. :)
Col
