Retrieving files from restricted access folders

[Shifty Geezer]

A little while back I was very clever and copied all my essential info, passwords and registration details to a folder on my data partition. To be secure I limited access to the password protected Administrator accourn. Ha ha, cunning!

However, my Win2000 installation had become prett unstabel and I needed a reinstall. Now I find I can't access the files in my folder.

I've accessed the folder's contents though the Admin account, and removed permissions, and everything else I can think off, but when I try to open a file I'm told it's not available.

How do I fix this?!

 

[ERP]

As I understand it your basically screwed........

Encrypted folders can only be opened on the installation on which they were encrypted. This unfortunatly makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

Unless someone has a handy dandy hacking tool you are SOL.

 

[Guden Oden]

Ya shoulda backed up the encryption keys for that administrator account, now you need to brute-force your way into your own files - and I hear it's a fairly secure filesystem. Read about a similar situation on storagereview a couple years ago, so unless there are tools to do this job for you it's going to be very difficult to acces your data...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's kinda dumb! If the encryption is installation dependant, and MS can't create a reliable OS that doesn't need a replacement installation every once in a while, it's a bit of a waste of time. At least, as a backup.

Thankfully I know all the details I need or can retrieve them from elsewhere. I'll stick to password encrypted .zips instead for backups!

Cheers,

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

That's kinda dumb! If the encryption is installation dependant, and MS can't create a reliable OS that doesn't need a replacement installation every once in a while, it's a bit of a waste of time. At least, as a backup.

Otherwise it would be trivial to mount the device from a bootable CD or another system drive and read the protected files as administrator on the new boot device. Obviously this kind of encryption shouldn't be used for backups for just that reason.

 

[Frank]

Add the drive to your new computer, login as administrator, right-click the folder, go to Properties, Security, Advanced, Owner and select "Take ownership", and make the administrator the owner of all files and subdirs. You need to log in as "administrator" to make this work (not just someone whith administrator rights), and if you use XP Home, start in Safe mode. (F7, IIRC).

That might take a while, but afterwards you can access the files, copy them, change the access rights, etc.

 

[Colourless]

The Encrypted File system is designed so that people can NOT get unauthorized access to your files under any circumstance.

Windows even warns you about certain situations such as forcable changing another users Password will make it impossible for them to access any files they have encrpyted.

 

[Frank]

The Encrypted File system is designed so that people can NOT get unauthorized access to your files under any circumstance.

Windows even warns you about certain situations such as forcable changing another users Password will make it impossible for them to access any files they have encrpyted.

Yes, but I don't think that's what he used. That is only assumed. Read the first post again.