File Share Encryption

I was hoping somebody could help me. I have a clinet and one of their laptops has stopped working. I was trying to use the PGP recovery disk to decrypt the drive so that I could recover the files on the HDD and then reload Windows. I started the decryption process yesterday around 2PM CST and I came back into my office today and noticed that there was a black screen with a message stating that the operating system could not be found. I restarted the computer and bootguard  is giving error message “bootguard Geom Error”. I can load into the recovery disk but the password that the user gave me that worked yesterday to start the decryption process no longer works. I am stuck now and do not know how to proceed. If you could give me hand to get this drive decrypted I would very much appreciate it. 

Hello Joshua,
 

I recommend reading through and attempting our standard recovery procedures.
The recovery procedures are available at the link below.
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH149679

I understand you have likely already attempted some of the steps. However the recover document is fairly comprehensive, and lists most options available for recovery :)

Have you attempted to slave the drive to a second computer where you have Symantec Encryption Desktop installed yet?

Section 2 in the recover article above describes how to use the commandline recovery options once you have slaved the drive to a second computer with SED / PGP Desktop.
This is always a good option, as you can use a commay prompt to get more data about the status of the drive.

The pgpwde Enum and status will give you an indication of wether our not the encryption data is available. If it is not available you may want to try pgpwde --recover --disk x
If the partition table is damaged the recover command will look for a second copy of that data, which should be written to a random location. It may take a while to run as it will search the drive from beginning to end.

Regards,
Phil

I have not attempted to slave it yet. This is the only machine that has Symantec on it. I have contacted the previous company that used to support this client before my company took over for serial info so that I could download the proper SED version and install it on another machine to try and slave it. My hands are really tied as to what I can do at the moment. My hope is to be able to get the info from the previous support company.

It sounds like you are on the right track with contacting the previous company. I have worked at places where things were taken over from previous support teams, and sometimes you can find information like that socked away in a filing cabinet.

If you can get the SN (begins with M) from the previous owner, you will be able to download SED from fileconnect.symantec.com

At that point, you can install it without a license. It will install in trial mode, which will allow you to perform the troubleshooting steps discussed above.

Additionally, there may be a way to sign up for a software trial. However, since the release of endpoint encryption 11 I dont see a SED trial link anywhere. It's worth a try if you want to jump through the hoops to see if you can download SED ( may be listed there as Encryption powered by PGP Standalone, serverless )

Thanks Phil! I will look into that.