How to access files which turned green

[ayanrc]

I kept a few hidden files in a USB drive and later in my machine windows 7 OS was reinstalled..when I tried to access it again, all files and folders coming as green and not accessible.

I tried a few things like right-click and turn off "Encrypt content to secure data", or adding my account and giving full permission. But nothing worked.

Greatly appreciate your help here..

 

[Brink]

Hello Ayanrc, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Yep, green file names means that the file has been encrypted using the EFS file encryption feature included in Windows 7. Unless you backed up the EFS certificate somewhere safe after encrypting the files, you will not be able to restore that same EFS certificate and be able to have access to the encrypted files again.

You may be out of luck unless you backed up your EFS certificate.

You could see if the 30 day free trial of the Advanced EFS Data Recovery program may be able to decrypt the files.

 

[ayanrc]

Thanks a lot for the details.. I'll try out the link which seems to be the last hope for me

 

[Brink]

I hope it works for you. Please let us know how it went.