Encryption lock out problem

zherlthsh

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Jan 22, 2011
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0
18,510
Hello I decided a while ago that it would be a good idea to encrypt my files with personal information on my external hard drive using the windows utilities. About a month ago I wiped my OS windows 7 and did a clean install and now I am having the problem where I have suddenly been locked out of my own files and I'm never asked for the pass code to the files.

One thing I have noticed is that it said the certificate expired 2 weeks ago so I tried to update it and either I did it wrong or that just didnt work.

Also the user name on the pc was changed vs the one on the certificate so i thought maybe if i changed my username to my old username it would authenticate correctly but that didnt work either.

Any suggestion on how to get access to my files would be greatly appreciated because I need to get an address out of one.
 
Solution
If you didn't back up the encryption certificate/s or recovery key/s then you are out of luck. There are no back doors to the encryption, and you will never crack the keys. This is why you make backups.

zherlthsh

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Jan 22, 2011
16
0
18,510
I think I do have a back up from before, I found a file in my docs that's a back up cert and I typed in the correct password to the external hard drive cert (i dont have any certs for anything else) and I went though the wizard but it still says access denied after i type to open the file.