Recover EFS certificate from windows.old or .vhd?

[senselocke]

My SSD bit the dust, and I've lost my EFS encryption keys. There exists nowhere in windows.old a .pfx file to be found. I do have the credentials from

C:\Windows.old\Users\MyProfileName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SystemCertificates\My\Certificates

I have a .vhd backup of the old drive, but it wasn't bootable with the new SSD. After two weeks of work, I wound up re-installing windows 7 and moving the old installation to windows.old.

I need to get the encryption keys out of windows.old so I can gain access to my encrypted files again. I have the windows.old directory and access to my old user profile, I have the .vhd file (which had issues booting with Virtual Machine--never got around to using third party apps). I also tried using "cipher /x" from within the recovery environment when I was logging in with the correct credentials, but it was telling me the system could not find the file specified.

How can I gain access to my encryption keys from my windows backup image or from my windows.old folders? Alternately, how do I migrate the .vhd to a new hard drive and actually boot the darn thing (bare metal recovery)? Isn't that the point of a whole disk image--to be able to back up to a new hard drive when the old one dies out?

Thanks.

 

[torchwood]

folder View

Did you change the attributes to show hidden files and folders before you did the search, Default is hide.

Roy

 

[senselocke]

Yes I did.

To double-check, you mean ALT > Tools > Folder Options, View tab:
"Hide protected operating system files" (uncheck); and
"Show hidden files, folders, and drives" (select)

ext: pfx shows up nothing under windows.old\users\. Thing is, I can't remember if I ever exported the keys in the first place, so I'm uncertain if there are even .pfx files to search for.

 

[torchwood]

Thats correct, sorry couldn't be more helpfull way outta my league.
On a side note had so many different passwords/keys, decided to put em on a stick.

Roy

just found this