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Recovering encrypted (EFS) files on XP


mogambo

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A possibly out-of-scope request here, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case anyone is feeling ambitious. A while back, my XP install was corrupted beyond repair, and I had an EFS-encrypted folder on there that had a few files that I couldn't recover after I added a new hard drive and did a clean reinstall, since EFS files can only be read by the encryption keys that load with user (which apparently died with XP).

 

Anyhow, the new drive with the new XP install can read the corrupted drive just fine, so I believe I can copy over the encryption keys, which should then allow me to decrypt/copy the EFS-protected files. It seems there are other (costly!) programs that claim to be up to the task (http://www.elcomsoft.com/aefsdr.html & http://www.lostpassword.com/efs.htm), but I'd rather live without the files than spend $200 to recover them. I found a how-to on microsoft.com a while back, but I gave up after a couple hours because they explain things like William Hung sings opera. Maybe you can follow: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457020.aspx

 

I may be asking you to go well beyond the scope of what was intended for Recuva, being that it seems to be more of an undelete utility than disk recovery agent, but I thought I'd toss it out there since you guys did a fantastic job on CCleaner and I figure you might be up to the challenge. Thus, my suggestion is that you find a way to incorporate EFS key recovery into Recuva so that it can not only restore deleted files, but also encrypted files that are not necessarily victims of deletion, but rather victims of Windows' propensity to commit hara-kiri every so often.

 

Thanks either way, because even if you can't help me recover my files cheaply, you still make it damn easy for me to keep my PC crap-free! CCleaner rocks!

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