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Windows 10 - Cannot recover a pc post encryption

StephanieGelder

So I only have half a dozen devices on encryption as i'm still testing / playing with it.

 

But the problem is I have only done one desptop PC which is running Windows 10 and that has crashed and now i cannot get back into it.  Windows 10 startup repair fails.. When I try to go to previous versions it wont find anything I have the key from my server which i type in and it lets me get in I can open a windows prompt and see the C Drive (shown as the D Drive) So i can see the data but cannot boot from it.

 

I've put a windows 10 usb stick in and cannot get that to reinstall windows either.....

 

So do i take it that it's pure coincience the only win10 desktop i have on encryption has totally crashed how do you recover stuff on dead Win10 desktops that have encyrption on them? do I treat this as a unlucky one off stick a new disk in that pc and carry on and not worry?

 

Or is something screwed?



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  • 0

    Sorry to hear you're having issues. I can assure it all does work fine with W10, and you should have no real issues.

    It sounds as if Windows has become corrupt and cannot repair it's own files. I'd suggest that this is a coincidence, especially if the recovery key is allowing the drive to boot.

    If there's no data on the test machine I would reinstall Windows and set it up again. There should be no issue doing this, IF the PC will allow booting to USB before the HDD boots. This way the PC will be unaware the drive is already encrypted and setup can wipe the drive and continue. You'll obviously lose all your data. 

    There's various ways of recovering the data - I prefer to use a bootable USB (with a working Win10 install on it) and then using the command prompt use XCOPY to pull the data off. There's a few ways though - completely depends on what state the drive is in and if you want/can remove the drive.

     

  • 0 in reply to MichaelMcLannahan

    Thanks for that.

     

    One quick question. If I reinstall the disk from scratch or find it's very poorly and have to replace the disk, should I delete the PC From within Sophos and essentially treat it as a new pc when i reinstall windows even if i get if the same pc name as that's associated with a service tag.  Otherwise it won't have any of the stuff on it that corresponds within Sophos Enterprise Encyption Server for that PC.

     

  • +1 in reply to StephanieGelder

    Yes, best to delete it from the SSG console once you’ve formatted it again. I always leave it until Windows Is reinstalled, you never know if you’ll need the recovery key again!

    The rebuilt machine will have a different key once it’s encrypted again with SafeGuard, so the old recovery key will be redundant.

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