Exception during processing

[Nikki DeMartini]

Hi,

Our HR files are encrypted using Axcrypt. It worked perfectly before, but now I’m running into the following error:

I’ve tried fixing the ownership issue but that didn’t work. If it helps, the files are located on a shared drive on our server. 

Thanks in advance.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Nikki,

A common cause for this is that someone has mistakenly encrypted the files using Windows Encrypting File System encryption. The easiest way to determine this is to look at how Windows Explorer displays the names. If the file names are displayed in green text, they are encrypted with EFS.

You then need to find who did that, and ask that person to decrypt them. If this is not the problem, it is indeed an access control issue – possibly on the share itself.

You can also try to copy them from the share to the local drive and see if you can access them there. This will help in understanding where the problem is – it’s not a solution, just a way of removing the network access issues from the equation.

 

[Nikki DeMartini]

Hi again,

It looks like they’re displaying in black text. Any idea where to go from here? Pardon my ignorance, I’m not well versed with encryption stuff.

 

Thank you!

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Nikki,

As it turns out Microsoft has updated how EFS-encrypted files are displayed in Windows 10. Instead of green text, they are now displayed with a little yellow/golden lock icon overlay. Which is exactly what I see in the screen shot!

So, this is indeed a case of the files being encrypted with EFS. You’ll have the same problem probably opening the unencrypted PDF-files in the folder. This is not an AxCrypt problem, you’ll have to ask the person who mistakenly used EFS to encrypt the files to decrypt them.

[Author]

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