Backup Encryption Key for Windows 7 Professional?

[lsquare]

So my laptop has Windows 7 Professional installed. For some odd reason, there is usually an icon in the taskbar which asks me to backup the encrpytion key/file. I have no idea what this is.

I thought this may be related to the Bitlocker program, but W7 Professional doesn't even have Bitlocker so I'm not sure why I'm getting that prompt. Does anyone here know why I'm getting that message?

 

[RebateMonger]

Most likely it's a warning to back up your EFS certificate.

 

[lsquare]

Most likely it's a warning to back up your EFS certificate.

What's EFS? Does W7 Professional even come with it? I don't recall that being a feature of W7P. How do I disable that message from appearing?

 

[ViRGE]

EFS = Encrypting File System. Windows has offered the ability to encrypt individual files and folders for some number of years now. The EFS certificate would be the certificate containing those keys.

 

[lsquare]

EFS = Encrypting File System. Windows has offered the ability to encrypt individual files and folders for some number of years now. The EFS certificate would be the certificate containing those keys.

I don't recalled seeing this when I was using Windows XP. Anyways, is there a registry tweak or a way to disable this? It's annoying and I thought Windows 7 Professional doesn't have any encrypting features.

 

[notposting]

It means something is encrypted. I just ran into this downloading a Lisa emulator, it had some encrypted files and then I would have needed to setup cygwin etc. But it wanted to backup the encryption key.

I think I had it backup to the WHS, but I downloaded a file manager to search for encrypted files, found the stupid Lisa software and deleted it. So if you find whatever is encrypted and remove it I think that should also help you.

 

[RebateMonger]

Or just back up the Key. It'd probably take 30 seconds. My quick search on this topic showed that some programs, without telling you, will create some EFS-encrypted files. That's when the warning will start popping up.

EFS has been in the "Professional/Business/Ultimate/Server" versions of Windows since at least Win 2000.

Folks come here when their computers have gone down and they have EFS-encrypted data files and haven't backed up their Key. Unless they are on a Domain, their data is "gone" forever.