Am I SCREWED?! Regarding Windows NTFS encryption....

Here's the story:

I got sick of my overflowing file cabinet full of papers so I spent the time to scan pretty much the whole thing. So after many many hours, I had a folder with hundreds of electronic copies of my original papers. This included things like bill statements, tax returns, banking information, etc... Being a bit worried that this sensitive info was now on my computer, I used windows to at least encrypt the entire folder. Everything was working fine for about a month. After encryption, I manually backed the whole folder up to an external drive. My backup strategy has always been to keep the OS on a separate partition from my personal stuff and use TI9 to image that partition every so often. I manually backup my personal docs on the other partition. Every so often, when windows bogs down, I "roll it back" to a previous acronis image of my C drive (the one with Windows on it).

I recently "rolled it back", recovering my C partition. I'm unsure whether my most recent image was made prior to encrypting the folder on the other partition or after I did it. Either way, I get "Access Denied" messages when I try to open documents in my encrypted folder! I still use the exact same windows login stuff as I did when I encrypted. Is there anyway to use those documents now? I'm so screwed if I can't. I shredded pretty much every paper copy once I had backed up the electronic copies. I had no idea this encyption thing would go crazy if I re-did my C drive. I thought it would be a simple matter of entering a password if worst came to worst.

Can somebody PLEASE help me or tell me that indeed I will never be able to access those documents! Thanks.

 

You may have looked at this site, it bailed me out once:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308993

 

I think it is possible that somehow your SID number has changed - not sure how as you haven't actually done a full re-install, but it might be worth checking to see if you actually have file permissions on the back up.

To do this you need to boot into SAFE mode, navigate to the folder with your files on it and then follow the instructions here

Colin