Hey, got a hell of a problem for you guys! I have a maxtor 20 gb internal hard drive now hooked up to my laptop via usb adapter (Vantec) with many old files on it. Some of them I encrypted on my XP system years ago. I have the security certificates from that installation, and imported them into my Vista Home installation on laptop. Since it's the home version, I read that the way to decrypt is though cipher.exe. I'm using it as directed, with the command "cipher d/ a/ s:theencryptedfolder", but always get "access denied"! I have already set the Ownership of the files and folders to my current Vista user account, as well as the full control access permissions. I can freely view all of the folders and subfolders and files with the encrypted directories, but I can not open the files themselves, getting "access denied" when trying. The file names show up in green (as one would expect), the folders show up in normal black. The "encypt contents to secure data" box for each file is grayed out checked! Tried several different combos of allowing full control and ownership to Administrators, Everyone, and System, and setting inheriting permissions for the subfolders, files etc.

Am I doing something wrong with the file security settings, or does the fact that the files are encrypted prevent me from truly enabling access permissions on them or something? What should I do?? Please help.

OOps, nevermind. I guess I had imported the certificates under my laptop's other user account. It works!!

Windows' Awesomeness: 1, My Brain: 0.