File Share Encryption

I have the following situation: I had to reinstall the operating system on our general manager PC. He had his computer encrypted with PGP and a hardware token. After i reinstalled the OS (Windows XP 32 bit), all necessary programs installed and moved back all his data, I installed the latest version of PGP Desktop. I generated new keys on the hardware token (Alladin java 72k -which is in the list of compatible hardware tokens). I tested the pair of keys by generating a new virtual encrypted disk, changing the token password and testing again if it works, everything was fine. In the last stage, I performed a whole disk encyption (as it was before reinstall). The computer has only one SSD disk with only one partition. When the encryption ended, the whole system started to work awfully slow. After aprox 1 hour after the encryption ended, i performed a reboot. The computer started, and asked for my token password. I entered it and it said "password incorrect". I tried for 4 times again, making shure i typed it correctly, with the same result. I installed alladin pki client on another computer to check the numer of tries and logon, and the password worked OK, I had 15 of 15 tries available. I thought that maybe the system doesn't see the token in USB port at boot time. I tried all the configurations possible in BIOS with all USB ports available, no luck. I want to know if you have some tools or a sollution for this issue, to get data back. The data is HIGHLY SENSITIVE and VERY important. So important and sesitive that the general manager didn't allow to have a copy of that data anywere. If we need to pay for any intervention to solve this issue, we'll do it but we want to know if there's a way to get that data back.

I've not been in this situation, so don't know if this will work, but would suggest trying use of the WDE Recovery CD for either booting or decryption of this disk.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH149679

thank you very much for this info, I didn't know there are any recovery images. But I still can't decrypt the disc... It asks for token pin, I enter it, it says that it's unloading the driver and after that it freezes in the next step, where it says that there is a bootable disk available and to press 'D' if I want to decrypt it. I did leave it for about a hour in that stage, maybe he's going to the next step where it's decrypting but no success, the whole system freezed in that stage... any sugestions ?

It might possibly help to slave the disk to another computer with PGP installed, and then to decrypt from within Windows on that machine.

thank you very, very, very much ! In very weird way, I was able to get the data back. I installed latest PGP Desktop, on another computer and took care to specify that i want to use previous keys, NOT to generate new keys and at the end, after restart, i connected the encrypted HDD and token. I had to do a restart again, because there was something fishy with the token (it kept asking for the PIN, even if I entered it correctly). After the restart with HDD and token connected, PGP still didn't detected the encrypted HDD but the password for token worked and Windows was able to see the content of the HDD. Copied as fast as I could with total commander all I needed, checked that all data is consistent and started from the beggining: reinstall OS, necesarry programs, etc. I'm unbelievable happy ! :)