Mike Green
New Member
Hi,
I encrypted some files with EFS in Windows 7. Now recently my system crashed, and got corrupted, and so I installed Windows 7 on a new disk.
Now, I would like to pick up my old files, and that workd (Disk is ifne, but OS is corrupted), except I can't get to my encrypted files. I have the EFS files which are supposed to hold the keys (which I thought was what I'd need to access), but those and the encrypted files don't help me to access my files...
(Well actually, it helped me to access some, files, but not all.... did something get regenerated and the new files have a different key? No idea... As you can tell, my EFS experience is limited, and I thought I was being clever to encrypt some files.... to clever by half to never try the reocvery path)
I can also pull those files out of the backup, same situation...
I also have access to the old disk (but can't boot Windows, because it's corrupted - just BSODs every time I try to boot), inclkuding the \ProgramData\Microsoft\...\Crypto files - but don't know what I would do with those?
Other ideas - I could try to brute-force copy portions of the working \Windows directory on the new disk over to the old and hope that it fixes whatever is corrupt on that.... my owrry is I don't know what is program, what is data in \windows, so don't want to proceed with that without understanbding what I should be copying to fix any application files, DLLs, etc, but not keys, passwords, and the like... (I have admin and othe rpasswords to access my files, if I could boot the old installation...)
I'll appreciate any help and advice.
Thanks!
I encrypted some files with EFS in Windows 7. Now recently my system crashed, and got corrupted, and so I installed Windows 7 on a new disk.
Now, I would like to pick up my old files, and that workd (Disk is ifne, but OS is corrupted), except I can't get to my encrypted files. I have the EFS files which are supposed to hold the keys (which I thought was what I'd need to access), but those and the encrypted files don't help me to access my files...
(Well actually, it helped me to access some, files, but not all.... did something get regenerated and the new files have a different key? No idea... As you can tell, my EFS experience is limited, and I thought I was being clever to encrypt some files.... to clever by half to never try the reocvery path)
I can also pull those files out of the backup, same situation...
I also have access to the old disk (but can't boot Windows, because it's corrupted - just BSODs every time I try to boot), inclkuding the \ProgramData\Microsoft\...\Crypto files - but don't know what I would do with those?
Other ideas - I could try to brute-force copy portions of the working \Windows directory on the new disk over to the old and hope that it fixes whatever is corrupt on that.... my owrry is I don't know what is program, what is data in \windows, so don't want to proceed with that without understanbding what I should be copying to fix any application files, DLLs, etc, but not keys, passwords, and the like... (I have admin and othe rpasswords to access my files, if I could boot the old installation...)
I'll appreciate any help and advice.
Thanks!
