I recently had to reinstall windows, and forgot to decrypt some files.(cant remember why I used the windows encrypter) Is there any way to decrypt those files even though I've reinstalled? I was able to recover a key of some sort using a data recovery tool(I did the quick format). Any help would be great.

normally you would not be able to reopen those encrypted files but if you really did find the key it should be able to be done. as to how i dont know. but maby do a search of the xp forum. or try windows anoyance orgs forum. see to rember reading something about this in the xp book he wrote. ••• Resistance is invigorating! •••kill spyware

quack, unfortunately... as I was told by Microsoft when XP first came out. NO.. that is unless you have created a recovery agent. I had several years worth of MS Money files, encrypted using the EFS.. I lost it due to a 'security fix' from MS. I contacted them.. nothing they could do for me... but they did send me a new version of MS Money for free... Anyway.. here is an entire article on EFS and how to recover.. http://www.compulink.co.uk/~davedorn/computing/windows/xpencrypt1.htm Tank863

I have the 40-character long file that was in the cetificates folder. Can I do anything with that?