Recently I did a swap of Windows 32bit to Windows 64bit on my main laptop and in the process I managed to lock myself out of literally every file I have thanks to me not having on hand the encryption key backup I made three years ago. This encryption actually isn't bitlocker but it's the EFS stuff -- I've been using it since the days of having XP Media Center to Vista, and now Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate and in all those years my migrations have been flawless till now. Anyway, I've been trying to restore files through Carbonite and Aconis but those programs can't strip the EFS setting. Currently I have my data fetched from the Windows.old folder after I did my reinstall but the majority of those folders are still locked up. I do however have an exact clone of my last system after initially installing Windows 7 so I think I might be able to find the key in there, but after searching all over, I'm not able to access the Certificate Manager except through my current install so I wanted to ask if anyone would happen to know of a way to retrieve the key within my Acronis clone -- such as if there's a Windows folder containing it, or a way to access the registry.

Hi, Since you have already made a clean installation, I would like to advise that you cannot decrypt the files if the recovery agent is issued by the previously built-in administrator. The only way which can decrypt the files is to restore the old installation, then decrypt the files. For more information, please access the following link. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc512680.aspxPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.