Hello Everyone,

I hope I'm posting this in the right forum.
A friend of mine converted his eternal USB hard drive to NTFS for better security because people are always borrowing it and he didn't want people snooping around on it. Well he encrypted several files and folders and even set permissions so that only he had access.

He later got a virus on his computer and ended up reformatting and reinstalling the OS. All went well except now he can't access the files and folders he previously encrypted on the USB drive. We've tried taking owership and adding a recovery agent, but even after that we couldn't gain access. The recovery agent name doesn't even show up in the list under the details area of the files. However, it does show up under all other files that weren't previously encrypted by his old username. We also tried the cipher command to decrypt and still received the "Access Denied!" error.

He used the same username and computer name that he had before the reinstall. That username still shows up under the "Users who can transparently access this file" area. But apparently, the certificate doesn't have the correct key. I've scoured the internet for answers and most of the websites just say the same thing, which is basically, he should've exported the key to a secure place and then imported it when needed. The sites also say that the designated recovery agent is supposed to be able to gain access without a key. So my questions are:
Why doesn't the recovery agent we added work?
Is there any way I can decrypt and regain access to the files and folders again?

I fear he may have to purchase some kind of decrypting software, but hopefully someone here may have a better answer.

Thank in advance,

Internalrage

This pretty well explains it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308993

The SID associated with your friend's previous username is gone; therefore, that user, including any other users listed as Recovery agents no longer exist since that load of Windows was formatted.

You may be able to recover the files by copying or moving them to a non NTFS volume.

Life's more painless for the brainless.

Thanks for the advice Jennifer SUMN. We're going to try copying them to a non-NTFS volume. I just have a feeling it may not work because we're denied access just trying to copy them from the USB drive to the PC. Even through the command prompt we're denied. But still it's worth giving a shot. Much appreciated.

Internalrage

You're welcome. I hope it works for you....

Life's more painless for the brainless.

Well I tried to move the files to a fat32 hard drive and even tried a USB thumb drive and I received the same message from both:
"Access Denied!"

Well thanks for trying. I guess he's going try to find a good decryting program that will hopefully work.

Internalrage

Try popping the drive into a linux box, it shouldn't hassle you about the encryption, it might, but I'm just taking a guess now... goodluck