RE: Cannot Decrypt Files

From: CJ (CJ_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/20/05 

Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 19:19:02 -0800

I would like to add that we used the efsinfo tool and found the users that
encrypted the files and the certificate thumbprint numbers, but... it also
says that it doesn't know which users can decrypt these files. And like I
said, we've tried as domain admins. The users are no longer here and we are
unsure where the particular system they used is not located (it's been
several months since this user was terminated and the computers have all been
moved around since then). What are our options?

"CJ" wrote:

> My tech group and I are rebuilding one of our site's servers. We've run into
> a bit of a snag, though, in backing up user folders and information in that
> some files and folders have been encrypted and will not copy to a remote
> location. We are in the server as the domain admin which is a designated
> data recovery agent, necessary to decrypt EFS files and folders. We ran
> cipher with the following:
>
> cipher /d /s:d:\ /a
>
> And still we were unable to decrypt the files. Each time, it ran for every
> file and folder on the system, but when it came to the encrypted files, we
> received the error "Access is denied."
>
> We are banging our heads against a wall this evening... we did NOT expect
> this situation. Any help would be appreciated. TIA!

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