Disabling EFS Encryption in Windows XP

Make the file or folder a system file or system folder—You can establish a system file or system folder either by setting the file’s or folder’s system attribute or adding the file or folder to your XP system's %systemroot% folder. To include the system attribute, use the attrib.exe command-line utility with the +S flag. For example, to set the system attribute of the file summary.doc in the C:personaldocs folder, go to the command line and type

Deny users the Write permission to the file or folder.

To disable EFS encryption at the folder level, create a file called desktop.ini in the folder for which you want to disable EFS—The desktop.ini file must contain the following information:

Create the EfsConfiguration registry value—Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionEFS registry subkey. From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value. Type the name

Clear the Allow users to encrypt files using Encrypting File System (EFS) property check box in an XP machine’s local security policy—To set this property, open the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Local Security Policy snap-in, expand the Public Key Policies container, then right-click the Encrypting File System container to open its properties. To refresh the local policy, run gpupdate.exe from the command line. Gpupdate is an XP command that refreshes Group Policy application on the local machine.