cannot access encrypted file, changing security ownership ..

Please someone help, I am begging from the bottom of my heart. I have over
six months of preparation getting my website going, this includes all my
spreedsheets, almost a thousand jpgs that I took and have edited, all email
correspondence for the last 8 months, business contacts, you name it, I have
it in this folder, and I cannot access it, it tells me access denied. These
are the steps that I am aware that I took to lead to this disaster.

1. I was worried that some hacker would get into my folder, so I encrypted
the folder using the advanced button in properties, it encrypted about 4.8gbs
of information, this was done about 2 weeks ago.

2. Next I told it I did not want anyone else to view/have access to this
folder, so I checked do not share also in the properties. done about the same
time, or may have been done before the encryption

3. norton security 2006 will not let me clean out my cookie index.dat, nor
any temp, internet temp index.dats, and they were growing rather large. So I
went back in to the folder properties about 5 days ago and said to share the
folder, but did not remove the encryption. (I knew I could log into my
spouses side and access the temp folders and clean out the index.dats that
way)

3a. So I get a blip saying I should password protect my files, or they
could be viewed by anyone. Of course I said yes, and I put in a password.

4. now everytime I turned the computer on, or even if I left and came back
and it had timed out, I would have to put in the password. That got annoying.
So I logged into the control panel\local security policy\account
policies\password policy and changed maximum password age to 1 day.
(yesterday)

5. which leads to today. When I went to log in, it asked what my new
password would be, I just left it blank and continued. Went back into the
control panel\local security policy\account policies\password policy and
changed the password change to 365 days.

Now I cannot get into my encrypted folders. I tried following the
instructions on the security and changing ownership... that did not work. I
still get access denied, or that some other program is using.

I tried the suggestion of changing ownership to the administrator, it did
not work. I still get access denied.

Thank you Colin and Nepatsfan. I appreciate the help. I cannot even begin to
tell you the time and effort you saved me.

God Bless and keep you all safe
Silver

"Silver" wrote:

>
> Please someone help, I am begging from the bottom of my heart. I have over
> six months of preparation getting my website going, this includes all my
> spreedsheets, almost a thousand jpgs that I took and have edited, all email
> correspondence for the last 8 months, business contacts, you name it, I have
> it in this folder, and I cannot access it, it tells me access denied. These
> are the steps that I am aware that I took to lead to this disaster.
>
> 1. I was worried that some hacker would get into my folder, so I encrypted
> the folder using the advanced button in properties, it encrypted about 4.8gbs
> of information, this was done about 2 weeks ago.
>
> 2. Next I told it I did not want anyone else to view/have access to this
> folder, so I checked do not share also in the properties. done about the same
> time, or may have been done before the encryption
>
> 3. norton security 2006 will not let me clean out my cookie index.dat, nor
> any temp, internet temp index.dats, and they were growing rather large. So I
> went back in to the folder properties about 5 days ago and said to share the
> folder, but did not remove the encryption. (I knew I could log into my
> spouses side and access the temp folders and clean out the index.dats that
> way)
>
> 3a. So I get a blip saying I should password protect my files, or they
> could be viewed by anyone. Of course I said yes, and I put in a password.
>
> 4. now everytime I turned the computer on, or even if I left and came back
> and it had timed out, I would have to put in the password. That got annoying.
> So I logged into the control panel\local security policy\account
> policies\password policy and changed maximum password age to 1 day.
> (yesterday)
>
> 5. which leads to today. When I went to log in, it asked what my new
> password would be, I just left it blank and continued. Went back into the
> control panel\local security policy\account policies\password policy and
> changed the password change to 365 days.
>
> Now I cannot get into my encrypted folders. I tried following the
> instructions on the security and changing ownership... that did not work. I
> still get access denied, or that some other program is using.
>
> I tried the suggestion of changing ownership to the administrator, it did
> not work. I still get access denied.