Somebody might have alread said this...i had encrypted My documents on my last XP install, and recently had to reformat suddenly, withotu being able to back up everything. So i was stuck with My Documents on my D: partition, encrypted and unusable, or so i thought. I emailed MS about it and they gave me a way around it:
1. Double click My Computer.
2. Click the Tools menu and click Folder Options.
3. Click the View tab.
4. In Advanced settings, please uncheck the "Use simple file sharing (Recommended)" check box.
5. Click Apply and click Ok.
6. Right click the folder "C:\My Documents" and click Properties.
7. Click the Security tab and click the Advanced button.
8. Click the Owner tab and choose a profile or group listed under "Change owner to:".
It helped me recover just over a gig of space. also, it's possible to use NTBackup to back up the files, then extract them to an alternate directory, removing the encryption in the process.
1. Double click My Computer.
2. Click the Tools menu and click Folder Options.
3. Click the View tab.
4. In Advanced settings, please uncheck the "Use simple file sharing (Recommended)" check box.
5. Click Apply and click Ok.
6. Right click the folder "C:\My Documents" and click Properties.
7. Click the Security tab and click the Advanced button.
8. Click the Owner tab and choose a profile or group listed under "Change owner to:".
It helped me recover just over a gig of space. also, it's possible to use NTBackup to back up the files, then extract them to an alternate directory, removing the encryption in the process.
