GPG4win problem need help!

I have been using GPG4win for several months now. I have 3 private keys one was a test key when i first started out. The second key is for my one email address the other is for my riseup.net account. To be specific i use GPA clipboard to encrypt and decrypt my messages and it would ask me for all three passwords when i decrypted it was a real pain in the butt. I was curious as to why it was doing that so i asked a friend to check what key he was getting my emails from and it turned out it was not the key i thought i was using. So panic struck me as to what was going on and i deleted all three of my private keys. I generated a new key and set the owner trust but it would not let me sign my key saying the default key was erased. I sent him my key anyways and he responded but it will not let me decrypt. I am lost i usually used enigma mail with thunderbird and i never had a problem but it was linked to a gmail account. After snowdens revelations i changed my online habits and am became interested in computer security and i am stumbling through this stuff on my own trying to learn. Can anybody give me a hand with this? Should i uninstall GPG4win and try this again?

 

You need to verify a default key. Open the GNU privacy assistant and you will see the preferences tab. Click on it and then you will want to verify your new key as DEFAULT. If it is not then make it default. All transmissions will use the default key unless you override it.

Unless you made a backup somewhere you will soon realize that any files/emails encrypted with the keys you deleted are lost forever. Maybe your friend can open them on his end using his keys and then re-encrypt them to your new default key. This way you can get the emails back. Your friends will only be able to open emails and files where you included their public key in the transmissions. I hope you understand this.


Addition: if you accidentally sent your friends emails that contained the public side of 1000 keys it wouldn't matter in the least. Only you have the private side of any full keyset that is yours. Without the private key side of any key pair those friends have NOTHING useful or dangerous to your privacy. I was a keyring admin for years and mistakes did happen. The beauty of PGP is that it takes both a private and public key to view encrypted stuff. Further; I could send you my entire keyset and unless you can break my password you still have nothing. PGP is secure so relax.

 

Ok i did exactly what u told me to do hopefully this works. I realize i lost all my old messages and files i had that were encrypted with my old keys ughh but its okay i will live. I feel like such a noob i thought i grasped the basics of GPG until now.

I went ahead and generated two private keys one for each email address i use and one is selected as a default key. It still will not let me sign my default key is that an issue? Still a tad bit confused as to why it asks me for both passwords when i decrypt a message is that just how it is on GPG4win if u have multiple keys?

 

I still cannot decrypt anything it says 'NO valid encryption data' when i try to decrypt emails. I have tried everything from new keys to removing GPG4win and reinstalling it! If anybody can chime in i would appreciate it i use this system for several dif email's accounts and i am not sure how to fix this.