Windows 7 Corrupted password recognition

[alathea]

Last week my video card crashed. Few days later, I got a new one installed which is working fine.

However, some strange and troublesome things happened in that process which I discovered afterwords:

1 - all my Outlook email accounts have lost their passwords
2 - my 2 Excel documents with personal data which were password protected could NOT be opened. (I could open all the other files) When I typed in the password in the password window, I got a message: "the file cannot be opened as it is corrupt".
3 - before I took my PC to a shop for repair, I backed it up on my external hard drive. so I plugged in my hard drive and opened those files from it. Again, I got a message - "the file cannot be opened as it is corrupt".
4. I plugged in my external hard drive to my laptop, and opened those 2 files there. Saved them without passwords back onto the drive.
5. when I plugged the drive back to my PC, I got a message - "to use this hard drive it needs to be formated". No way Jose - that would wipe out all my backups!! what the...?
6. I used a thumb drive to transfer those 2 important files from my laptop to PC - that went ok (phew...)
7. I encrypted the file with a different password. Close it and tried to open it. Again, I got a message: "this file cannot be open as it is corrupt". What the....?????

It's not the file, but something happened with my PC that prevents it to recognise encryption, and so it deems an encrypted file as "corrupt".

As I need to have some files password protected, I need to get this functionality back.

In the extensive troubleshooting, I did all sorts of things like downloading a few "fixing" and "diagnostic" programs from the web, one of which had a Babylon toolbar installation which stuffed up my browser. I could not get rid of it so did system restore to an earlier date.

I ran a virus scan, including Norton Power Eraser, and a malware scan.

I'm not a computer gig, but something tells me that the corruption happened in the registry.

could someone help me please?

I have Windows 7 Home Premium, MS Office 2007

thanks
Alathea

 

[kaos]

you mentioned that you encrypted the files, what with, and how?

 

[alathea]

well, encrypted in Windows is simply password protected.

BTW I inserted the "sad" smiley in my post title, which has somehow changed to "angry"...LOL

 

[kaos]

lol never mind about the face

did you use Bitllocker or did you right click the folder >properties > advanced , encypt contents??

 

[alathea]

no
MS Office button on top - Prepare - Encrypt and type in password

 

[kaos]

you may have to think of the password im afraid

 

[alathea]

don't understand what you mean - please explain

 

[kaos]

data is encyrpted for a reason, to prevent any unwanted access to the file. If it was so simple to get around then what is the point in the encyption in the first place? there isnt.

 

[alathea]

i'm sorry but your comment still does not make sense to me. It appears that you didn't read closely my initial post.

I asked for advice as to what could have happened to my encrypted (password protected) files which now cannot be opened as they are "corrupted"; furthermore - what has happened to my computer / Windows 7 which now does NOT recognise the encryption of files (even of new file), seeing them as "corrupted".