[Kurtyman]

okay, yesterday i decide to buy an external hard drive, 1TB going for cheap, so i was easilly pursuaded.
my computer has been running slow for ages, ive been putting it off to do a reformat since i dont have a windows cd, but my dad has finally managed to find someone with one, and so he shall retrieve it.

All my document files were green, i think. now only half of them seem to be green. I randomly tried accessing some of these green documents, the encrypted ones and i get the message:

"word cannot open the document: User does not have access privelidges"

and this happens for all the green, and only the green.

so i google it a bit, find stuff about reclaiming owner ship, try all that, i try to revert the files to normal and decrypt them, but when i try this (Right click > properties > advanced > uncheck box)
i get "An error occued whilst trying to apply attributes to the file , access denided" or similar message, might of got one or two words wrong.

the green files are only my newest files, theres about 40 or so from 4 months ago up untill now.

all those before it arent green and i can access.

i also cant copy these files to my external hdd.

anyone got any ideas how i can access these files and remove their encryption and copy them ?

yes i am the computer administrator, im the only account on the pc.

help me please

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There are 2 possibilities here.

Scenario #1 is before you re-did your hard drive and had your previous drive running with your documents on them you encrypted them. If you encrypted them then backed them up then formatted your pc and installed new you would have also needed to back up your encryption keys so that you could decrypt the documents once transferred to your new pc. If you did not backup your encryption keys you will not be able to access the documents period.

Scenario #2 Is that your previous installation of windows where your documents were originally held had a User Account with a password on it that you set. In which case you would need to do what is called "Taking ownership of a file and/or folder". In this case you can easily retrieve access to your documents by taking ownership. If you take ownership of a folder everything within that folder will become accessible.

Here are the instructions. Read closely about what you need to do based on if you have Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421


Good luck. Let us know if it works.

[AitrusSkyy]

There are 2 possibilities here.

Scenario #1 is before you re-did your hard drive and had your previous drive running with your documents on them you encrypted them. If you encrypted them then backed them up then formatted your pc and installed new you would have also needed to back up your encryption keys so that you could decrypt the documents once transferred to your new pc. If you did not backup your encryption keys you will not be able to access the documents period.

Scenario #2 Is that your previous installation of windows where your documents were originally held had a User Account with a password on it that you set. In which case you would need to do what is called "Taking ownership of a file and/or folder". In this case you can easily retrieve access to your documents by taking ownership. If you take ownership of a folder everything within that folder will become accessible.

Here are the instructions. Read closely about what you need to do based on if you have Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421


Good luck. Let us know if it works.