File Share Encryption

I have Windows 7 64-bit Professional running on a Thinkpad w520.

For the last few months, whenever I reboot, sometimes the OS will come right back, but sometimes it will not. I get the PGP WDE login prompt and successfully enter my password and then the system waits at the Starting Windows  . . .  splash screen. I have let it sit there for nearly 45 minutes.  The disk activity light is flashing and the disk is moving, but there doesn't appear to be any progress. 

I have tried to cold boot from this state. Again, I get by the PGP WDE login successfully and then the Windows startup recovery comes up. I have tried using those tools, but in all cases it can't find the MBR.  I did once try to repair the MBR, but realized that was a bad idea. I was able to decrypt my disk and then repair then re-encyrpt. The reboot problem went away for a time, but now has come back.

When this happens I usually have to cold boot (use power button) 2-3 times, then the OS will "kick in" and boot fine. 

I am sure there is a fairly easy fix for this IF my disk wasn't encrypted, but with PGP turned on, standard disk tools don't appear to work. 

Any suggestions to diagnose and repair? I would like to avoid decrypting again - it took 12 hours to decrypt and 15 to re-encrypt. ANd once decrypted, the problem couldn't be reproduced. 

With having rebuilt the Windows MBR while having the system encrypted, it does not sound like you have any option other than to decrypt the disk.  Don't know how you have decrypted before, but use of the PGP WDE Recovery CD would be the slowest opton.  Connecting the disk to another machine with PGP installed should be much faster.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the reply. I did have the disk connected to another machine to decrypt (our local company help desk has a setup just for that process). But since I can't reproduce the hang on startup in Windows without the disk encrypted, it is hard to determine what the problem might be. 

I tried using the recovery CD to see if it could diagnose any problems, but there aren't really many diagnostics included. 

Although not really helping diagnosis the cause of your problem, this Knowledge Base Article may help prevent a recurrence.