All of my important documents are encrypted-even to me

[harrykchris]

I installed a 90 day trial of antitheft on 13/Aug/2013 in my Windows 8 laptop.

Default setting was file protection ON. After installing I went to web management console and I switched file protection OFF.[ I wanted Device tracking only]

I have restarted the laptop several times since this.

However, when I try opening most of my PDFs it says' The document could not be opened as it is not a valid PDF file'

I have now realised that several key Word/PPT documents are also encrypted/

I have been using these files for several years before.

I have valid Adobe reader touch, Adobe reader, and Reader/MS Office

I am able to open a few PDFs  and word docs which I have not opened in ages. So no problems with laptop or software.

My belief is that encryption has gone haywire.

I have rang the Intel McAfee support guys, who were unable to solve and have escalated to next level of support.

However, you guys here seem to be very knowledgeable.

I wonder if you guys could help. Please..

THey are valuable documents to me (which is why I installed it in the first place.. now even I can't open them)

The laptop is fine as such

MS Office says documents are corrupt.

IS this the end of them??

Do you think I can recover them at all?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Hari

[exbrit]

An AT Support person should see this soon I hope but I need to point out that regular support can't help with Anti-Theft issues, the support phone number for AT for your area is:

From the United Kingdom, dial 0-800-917-7728

Language: English

Support hours: 08:00 - 1700 Local, Monday - Friday

Was that the number you called?   If not I suggest calling it anyway tomorrow as I have no idea how long it will be before AT support spot this.

.

Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 13/08/13 7:15:03 EDT PM

[harrykchris]

THe number I called was 18002575404 through the AT&T local access for UK number as it was out of hours for the UK office.

That seemed to be the right place although they were not able to solve the issue

[exbrit]

OK yes, that AT & T local access number also is good.  We have a couple of support people who are dedicated to AT so hopefully they'll chip in here soon.   None of us Moderators have AT-chipped computers unfortunately.....or fortunately depending on how you look at it I suppose.

[harrykchris]

I am now regretting installing antitheft in the first place!

I will wait for some solution.

Hopefully the damage isnt permanent??!!!???

Thanks

[exbrit]

I doubt it.  AT starts encrypting immediately but it takes a while to complete.  Pity that setting is on by default.   Have you tried solution 2 HERE ?

Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 15/08/13 5:46:15 EDT AM

[shilin]

May be you can try uninstall the product. During uninstall it will decrypt the files. Do let us know the result.

[harrykchris]

UNinstall did not solve the probem. Intel AT support did that by remote connection. Still same problem. Head scratching????

[harrykchris]

What I have found out is that the computer shut down and restarted during encryption and did a diskchk. I strongly suspect that this corrupted the encryption process??

Could that happen? How can I amend it if this is what had happened?

[shilin · Accepted solution]

Hari krishnan,

I need to gaher some information from your system to understand what went wrong. I sent you a PM, please respond to that.