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Help! Got locked out of own files

T

Turbo55

Senior member
My Windows XP somehow got corrupted. Everytime it boots up, just before the login prompt, it gives me a blue screen and an error message. So I tried to repair it by using the Windows XP installation CD, but the problem got worse. Now instead of the blue screen and message, it just reboots by itself -- thus, an infinite loop: boot up, reboot, etc.

I just want to get back my documents, so I installed a Windows XP on another harddrive in the system and hope to get access to my documents from there. Unfortunately, the My Documents folder is locked, it says "Access Rights Denied." I had make the folder private and encrypted prior to this problem due to obvious security reasons. Now, the question is, how can I get access back to my own folders?

I even make the username the same as the one I had before, but still could not get in. Somehow, Windows is so smart, it can tell apart the two different installation and accounts. I tried the Administrator account, hoping it will supercede all rights, but that didn't work either?

Any idea?
 
Did you encrypted the files in your My Documents folder? If so, you're SOL unless you made a backup of your EFS Private key. You need it to decrypt files that have been encrypted.
 
Originally posted by: kt
Did you encrypted the files in your My Documents folder? If so, you're SOL unless you made a backup of your EFS Private key. You need it to decrypt files that have been encrypted.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's encrypted. I think I have the EFS Private key, but I can't even open the folder, it says, "Access Denied." What can I do?

What is SOL?
 
If you had them encrypted, but hold the private key, you can recover your files.

Please read the FAQ: How to use EFS and backup your Private Key. My article tells you how to load up your Private Key, on the condition that you have previously backed it up.

If you have not backed up your private key, those files are lost unless you can get back into your original installation.

If you had them marked "Private", log in as Administrator and then change the access rights to Take Control of the files.
 
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