EFS - Find out what's encrypted

Question

Since a few days when I start Windows Vista i get a Popup from "Encrypting File System" (coming from process efsui.exe) asking me to backup the certificate and key.

I don't know what i did to get this message (The last SW i did install was google desktop).

Now i'm wondering what directories or file are encrypted with EFS. Is there a way to found out?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You can trying using this batch file :

@echo off
cls

:: Set the varibles - Use Quotes "" if there are spaces in the source or log path
set log_path=C:\EFS_Find

:: Find Encrypted Files
cipher /s C:\ | findstr "^.E" >> %log_path%\found.txt && echo:Encrypted files found"

:: Find Hidden Files
attrib /s C:\ 2>nul | findstr "^....H" >> %log_path%\found.txt && echo:Hidden files found"  

pause

This batch file will scan your C:\ drive for all EFS encrypted files (and also hidden files), echo on the screen every time it finds one, and record all instances of encrypted files found into C:\EFS_Find\found.txt.

For a command-line approach to finding just encrypted files, you can type in the command-line :

cipher /s:C:\ | findstr "^.E" >> C:\efs_found.txt && echo:Encrypted files found"

This will search your entire C:\ drive for encrypted files, and dump it into C:\efs_found.txt.

Modified from the solution found here.

To disable EFS on your Vista system, I refer you to the link here :

How to Disable or Enabled EFS Encryption in Vista

Answer 2

gsharp is correct, the syntax to display all EFS encrypted files on drive C: is

cipher /s:c:\ |findstr "^E"

Pay attention to the pipe character, which is usually found on the \ key. The findstr command ^E looks for the E at the beginning of the line. Also pay attention that the /s has a colon after it and the drive letter, all with no spaces.

The downside is only the filenames are returned, there is no directory structure provided.

Answer 3

For Win7 users: I just had the same problem, (someone sent me a zip file prepared on a mac, that for some reason encrypted itself on decompression), and I started to get the EFS Key backup prompt.

cipher /s:c:\ |findstr "^E"

and its variants returned no information.

however I was able to find the encrypted directories with:

cipher /u