I'm using xp pro and I'm having trouble with encrypted files. Here's what has happened. I periodically transfer all my emails from outlook express into a folder (I've called 'emails') on my desktop, this folder contains a folder for inbox, outbox and saved emails. I've been doing this a while with no problems. Today I decided to encrypt the folder 'emails' and its subfolders (inbox, outbox and saved) and files (all the emails obviously) still no problem.

then I double clicked on 'emails' and a window opened in which there were three folders inbox, outbox and saved, I double clicked on inbox and the window which opened showed a list of all my inbox emails in green text (to show they're encrypted as you know) then my system locked up completely, I can't shut the window down, I can't get task manager up and if it's already up it does nothing (it freezes as well) and the only way to turn my computer off is to force a shutdown.

If I try to un-encrypt the folder on its own I can do that but if I try to do the subfolders as well it locks up. If open the folder to try and un-encrypt the files individualy then my systen freezes. The thing is I have three email accounts and I encrypted the lot, I can't access them and I can't un-encrypt them, I also encrypted all my word documents and I get the same problem, as soon as I open a window with a few encrypted files in it my computer just freezes. The mouse moves but the windows don't respond or if they do it's only after several minutes and there is another window in its place. Everything else is ok it's just the folders and files I encrypted.

Please help cos my fist is STARTING to hurt from where I keep hitting things grrrrrr!Ok so this problem has been annoying me for most of the day but I have managed to get round it for now. I guess THAT'S why they INVENTED safe mode. I've managed to un-encrypt all the files and folders so no mre crashes. Still leaves me with the problem of what was causing it if I ever want/need to encrypt in the future.
Oh well1 I might be back than>GOOD to hear you found a WORKAROUND...
A search if the Microsoft KB didn't turn up much.
For a workaround you could use WinZip or 7Zip to zip the folder and then password protect it. Make sure you write down the password somewhere in a safe place just in case.

p.s. When was the last time you ran dskchk /R and defrag on that HDD ? ?Thanx for the suggestion I'll give it a go.

The problem I was trying to solve originally is this: I have 2 hard drives on my machine one of them has a primary partition C: and slave partition E:. The other drive has slave partitions D: and F:

What I want to do is log on my machine as administrator, put some files (namely my porn collection lol... only joking, theres quite a lot of sensitive business information... ok and some porn too!) onto a drive, log out of administrator and log into a guest account.

If I have put the files on C: then the guest account can't access the files, because admin desktop is set to private, but if I put these files on any other drive then the guest account can access them. As my young daughter will be using the guest account I need to make sure she can't access anything she shouldn't.

So the answer is to use drive C:, Yes but I want to keep C: for system files only then I can create logical drives for everything else.

So how do I prevent anyone but the administrator accessing a drive.

To be clear (I hope) I want to create 'logical drive' F:, call it 'business' and put all my business stuff on there. Create a 'logical drive' G:, call it 'pictures' and put all my pictures on there. Create a... you get the idea. But I want to set up my machine so that only the administrator can gain access to these drives and no other accounts.

Is this possible and if so how is it done.

The easiest way would be to burn the 2 collections of data seperately and copy them to the partitions you desire and then delete them from the C: partition...
This way you won't have to fool around with stopping and re-setting permissions etc...

A removable drive would be another possibility...

Buying her a machine for herself yet another possibility...