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I did a reinstall of windows after I was having some issue with updates not working and the winsxs folder was getting huge and eating up about 14gb of my 80gb ssd. I thought I decrypted all the files prior to the uninstall but I guess I missed some. I know the password. Is there any way I can get the old files decrypted?
John S
Posted 2013-05-29T03:43:33.777
Reputation: 111
Did you solve it? If yes (and you remember how), put it on an answer so other can know how you did it. – PhoneixS – 2015-05-26T15:13:01.563
What did you encrypt it with? BitLocker? Did you export your personal certificate before changing the password? – Canadian Luke – 2013-05-29T03:59:06.707
See also: http://superuser.com/questions/462971/ive-lost-access-to-my-encrypted-files/463036#463036
– Canadian Luke – 2013-05-29T04:03:33.973I guess it is bitlocker or efs. I clicked on the encrypt check in the properties menu. I have a backup of my user profile from before the reinstall so would I be able to get the cert from there? – John S – 2013-05-29T04:10:42.853
Is the certificate encrypted itself? If so, then no – Canadian Luke – 2013-05-29T04:11:11.440
nope it was just a documents folder with sensitive stuff like taxes and such not the whole drive. that folder was on a different drive actually. – John S – 2013-05-29T04:14:20.823
If you can access the certificate in an unencrypted manner, you can reimport it and read your files – Canadian Luke – 2013-05-29T04:16:41.163
thanks, I am restoring the backup from a cloud service, and its several gigs, so its gonna take a while. do you know where I can find the cert file? – John S – 2013-05-29T04:23:28.460
let us continue this discussion in chat
– Canadian Luke – 2013-05-29T04:30:50.127