Decrypting files

Once you have a complete list of encrypted files (created as described in Scan for encrypted files and Browse for encrypted files chapters) – of course, after the keys have been successfully recovered – you can start the decryption process.

First, you have to select the files to be decrypted – at Encrypted files tab. All files listed there have check boxes at the left of the names, and you have to mark ones for further decryption. You can do that one-by-one, or use Select all, Select highlighted, Unselect all and Reverse selection buttons in the right-bottom corner of the window. As noted in the previous chapters, only files with green color can be decrypted, and so the program will not allow you to select the red ones. You can also use Remove from list button to remove selected file(s) from that page.

When files are selected, press Decrypt button at the right (or Decrypt files button on toolbar). AEFSDR will prompt you for the disk/folder to save the file to. Under that folder, the program creates sub-folders with names like AEFSDR_X_DECRYPTED, where 'X' is the drive letter for partition you're decrypting the files from; the complete path (where the source file was located) will be reconstructed under this (AEFSDR) subfolder. Decryption itself is relatively slow process, so please be patient (the program will show the progress bar and the names of the files being decrypted).

It is strongly recommended to save (decrypt) files to NTFS partition only. Simply because FAT and FAT32 partitions have many limitations (compared to NTFS), and so saving some particular files to non-NTFS partition may fail or give unexpected result.

Note: an unregistered (trial) version of AEFSDR decrypts only first 512 bytes of all files, padding the rest of content with zeros (look at Registration to learn how to get the fully functional version). But even in full version, please verify that all files have been decrypted successfully, before deleting the original (encrypted) files.