Hey all,
I recently wiped my HD due to the fact that the Trojan I had (from the virus board) and the fact I was unable to sucessfully install Norton SW 2005.

HOWEVER. On my ATA Drive (which was not wiped), I had encryped some files to keep outsiders from searching thru them, but now that I got the new Installation of WINDOWS XP in and running but I forgot to Decrypt the Zip Files I encrypted before the wipe! Now I can't even access the files! How do I break the Encryption?Here's what WinZip has to say:

Be sure to keep a record of the passwords you use and to keep this record in a secure place. WinZip® has no way to access the contents of an encrypted file unless you supply the correct password. Before storing your only copies of critical information in encrypted form, you should carefully consider the risks associated with losing or forgetting the passwords involved.

There are crack programs you can find on the net (some are even free). Using the brute force method, they can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 43 days.

Good luck. You'll have a hard job, if you USED Windows Advanced properties to encrypt your file/folder (folder or file in green), because you have wiped the OP that encrypted the file this also killed the unique security identifier that hold the private key, even if you created an exact username in the new install, the ssid is not the same and hence you are now unable to decrypt the file because the private key does not match.

1- You have to login as "recovery agent" this could be DESIGNATED to the local administrator, (by default the 1st administrator to log on) decrypt the file.
2- This part will disappoint you, you must have a backup of the recovery agents private before you wiped you hdd
look in this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/241201/EN-US/OK, here's the deal,
I DID backup most of my files, but I didn't backup the Windows folder, that was where the Trojan I had was, but I'm still looking for WAYS to break the encryption O yea, thanks for the tips!

MegaMasta XIn otherwords, since I've got the fresh Windows on my IDE HD but the encrypted files on the ATA HD, since I don't have my encryption key thing-a-ma-jig, I can't decrypt the files?You're snookered otherwise.