File Share Encryption

Hello everyone!

I am praying for a solution.  I installed Whole Disk Encryption on my desktop computer and then encrypted the hard disk as well as two external hard drives.  I backed up the keys (.PKR and .SKR) to several flash drives.  Of course, the desktop crashed and now i am trying to reinstall/copy these backed up keys to the new desktop so that i can proceed to access/decrypt the data that is on my external hard ddrives.  Essentially, the external hard drives were the back up of my desktop.  Without being able to do this, I will have lost everything that i have ever stored on disk.  I cannot imagine the loss.  I am praying for a solution.

PLEASE PLEASE HELP!

Thank you so much.

James

When you install PGP on the new machine, it will ask you if you have existing keyrings.  Answer yes, and point it to the existing keyrings on your flash drive - let PGP copy them to the default location.  If you already have PGP installed, open PGP Desktop, select Import from the File menu, and point PGP to the private keyring (SKR).  After importing your private key, right click on it in All Keys, select Properties, and set Trust to Implicit.

Hi and THANKS for the help.  did exactly what you suggested (I already have PGP installed on my desktop, so i did the File:Import, but when i click on the SECRING.SKR file on my flash drive, i get a dialogue box that pops up and says "PGP is unable to import any keys, certificates, or groups from the selected file."  Are you positive this should work or do you think it would be better if i uninstalled PGP and start with it asking me if i have any existing keyrings - as you suggest above?

Again - thanks for help.  Im sooooo hoping I am doing something wrong or that an additional step has been left out or SOMETHING/ANYTHING!!!

Look very forward to your response.  

What is the size of the file?  It sounds like your private key is not there.

SECRING.SKR is 4K     and PUBRING.PKR is 2K....does this sound right?

That might be large enough for a private key to be there.  Please right click on it and select Properties to make sure it is not set as Read Only. Based on the size of the Public Keyring, is it correct to assume that you had little or no public keys there?  I'm just wondering if you copied the correct keyrings.

You might want to consider changing your keyring settings to use the keyrings on your flash drive.  You can right click on All Keys in PGP Desktop, select Properties, make note of this default setting, change these settings to your current flash drive keyring location, and then check My Private Keys and see if your private key is there. 

set (checked) to be "archive".  The Read-Only box is NOT checked.  You are probably correct to assume that there are little or no public keys.  I say this because i know i only did the bare minimum when i established PGP on my desktop.  I remember generating the pair of keys based on my email address and i think it 'assigned' that to the encrypting of my hard-drive/external drives.  I'm not sure what you meant by "copying the correct keyrings".  Basically, when i looked at my old hard-drive to see what i could "undelete" after i reinstalled Windows 7 on it, i recovered a pubring.PKR, a pubring-bak.PKR and a secring.SKR and a secring-bak.SKR.  These files are dated respectively from May 2011 and Aug 2011 so I assume they are good files that were used somehow to encrypt my external drives.  It is these files that i am trying to synchronize/match/assign to the external hard-drives.

I did change the keyring settings to look at these files on the flash drive but when i clicked on "My Private Keys" and searched "everywhere", it only returned private keys for a "andreas beuden" who i assume is maybe a developer at PGP or something.

Is it possible to call you or work thru this over the phone?  I hope i am stating things as clearly as I can?

Thanks so much for everything so far.  Look forward to your reply.

My reference to the correct keyrings was in regards to them being the actual keyrings that you were using.  Sometimes there are leftover keyrings from a prior install, or someone will later change their keyring location without deleting the leftover default keyrings that were never used. 

You shouldn't have anyone else's private key.  So what you are seeing might possibly be left from a prior user of the machine.  However, since your private key is not in your secring.SKR, it will not be of help to you.  I'd suggest now doing the same with secring-bak.SKR to see if your private key is there.  If it isn't, you apparently just don't have it for your desired use.  I'm guessing that you didn't either export your private key someone else, or make a copy of your private keyring on removable media, etc.

I only provide assistance via this forum.  If you have a support account, you may want to go here. 

is EXCELLENT.  Im just so losing hope that i have lost EVERYTHING....

Do i have to rename secring-bak.skr to secring.skr or does it care what the actual name is?  So i assume the .SKR is the "keyring" and inside it is private keys....one or many.  Do you have to specifically import these to the .SKR or is the first private key a default there?  In other words, when i generate the pair of "keys" based on the email address (that was used to encrypt the external hard drives), isnt it stored in the .SKR?  or would it be like another file extension that i would then haved to import into the .SKR?

When i load up PGP, turn the external harddrive on, and then highlight the external hard drive, it shows the email address key as the key but it puts a question mark beside it.  does that make sense to you?

Are there other extensions i can look for on the hard drive or is EVERYTHING in a .SKR or .PKR file?  Any other thing i can try?  ANYTHING???

As always, THANK YOU.

The keyring can be named anything, so you don't have to change its name (some people will purposely change its name for the purpose of hiding it).  The SKR and PKR are the default extensions for the private and public keyrings.  You don't need to be concerned about recovering the public key ring for your purpose (the private keyring also contains a copy of your public key {just without additional signatures, picture, etc}).  When you generate a new key, its private key is automatically placed in your default private keyring.  I don't know about that question mark with the email address, but it might be showing the public key used for the encryption, and that the private key for decryption is not present.  SKR is the only Symantec/PGP default private keyring extension, so I can't suggest any other for you to search for.

it seems like nothing is working....  exactly what steps (1, 2, 3 ...) would you take to make sure that PGP is looking at only one .SKR and that everything is checked/toggled/set correctly?  

For example, how do i know that EVERYTHING is using the .SKR...that it is 'trusted' and synchronized and anything else that is required?  I want to ensure that not only is it THE .SKR...but that everything else is correct....

Thanks so much....

Unless you exported your key to a file, and specifically made the selection to include the private key in the export, the only place your key can be is in the private keyring, which will (unless you have changed it) have the name secring.SKR or the backup private keyring which will have the name secring-bak.SKR.  The private keyring in use will be that shown when you right click on All Keys and select Properties.  If it is in the keyring you have set and you check for your private key, it will be there and there is no setting change necessary for you to see it.  If you are not seeing it and there are no more private keyrings to check, you will not be able to decrypt anything encrypted to its paired public key, unless you are able to locate another private keyring that does actually have the needed private key.  The only exception to this is if you have some kind of backup that you can obtain the private keyring from, or if you are in a PGP Universal managed setting where the key is also on the Universal Server (which you might want to ask your IT admin about if you are using this in a corporate setting that might possibly be using a PGP Universal Server).

just copy the .SKR that is in the default directory?

As for my external drive....is it possible to send it to you with the .SKRs that i have to see if you can get them to work?  Ill buy whatever plan is necessary if this is an option?

SKR's are just files that can be copied and sent to where ever.  The problem with sending it to someone is that if it has your private key, you are compromising the key by letting someone else have access to it.  If you really want to, you can email it to me via this forum's email and I will let you know what keys are in it, but it is highly unlikely I would see anything you are not already able to see.

it to encrypt my external hard drives.  Should you get this working, i can always decrypt and re-encrypt with another key.  My main question beside this is - IS it possible for me to send you my external hard drive AND the .SKR/.PKR files so that you can make sure you are "loading" it correctly into PGP software?  Again, Ill purchase whatever plan is needed to make this acceptable to you.  My data is data...i just want it back....

As always, thanks for such great support.

That is not something I could personally do for you.  My support is only via the forums.

allow me to send them my external hard drive with the keys to "engineer" around with?

I tried to send you my 2 .SKR keys so that you could investigate and tell me ANYTHING you can about them but it wouldnt allow me.  Gave me a "The selected file secring-bak.skr could not be uploaded. Only files with the following extensions are allowed: jpg jpeg gif png txt zip rar 7z tar tgz gz doc docx xls xlsx pdf ppt pptx pps ppsx odt ods odp mov avi mpg mpeg wmv flv swf mp4 mp3 xml" error.

Perhaps another email address?

Thanks Tom.... 

If you would like, you can send me the files here: thomas_mccune@symantec.com

Customer Care may be able to assist you with obtaining the level of support you are interested in. 

I received your keyrings.  They do contain a private key for JIveyD, Key ID D080902C, which I'm guessing is what you need.  You should be able to save the keyring to your desktop, select Import from the File menu in PGP Desktop, set the resulting dialog to look at your Desktop, set Files Type to Keyring Files, select the keyring, click Open, click Import.  Then right click on the file in All Keys of PGP Desktop, select Properties, and set Trust to Implicit.

While i was - in the end - unable to recover the correct private key that was used to encrypt my external hard drives, the support you offered was always clear and exactly what WOULD work - if only i had saved the right .SKR file.  Lesson learned.  

Again, Not sure I have ever received the level of outstanding support you have provided by any company ever.  I thank you for everything Tom.  

Best Always.

James