Access Denied on Encrypted File

Question

When trying to open or remove encryption attribute on files, I get an Access Denied error message.
Trying to remove the checkmark on "Encrypt contents to secure data", I first get the message "You will need to provide administrator permission to change these attributes" then "An error occurred applying attribute to the file: ...
Access is denied"
The user is administrator, own the files and has full control over files. The EFS certificate thumbprint on the files matches that of the users certificate in the certificate store.
All files experiencing this issue is in one particular folder that I recently moved from C:\ to My Documents.
Any ideas?
I have found that am able to unencrypt the small files (e.g. < 1000KB) in the folder, but not the big files.  Whatever the origin of the issue, it seems that the bigger files within the folder perhaps wasn't moved correctly?

Answer 1

Hi,
I suggest you take the ownership again using the following commands with elevated privilege.
takeown /f {Folder Path}
cacls { Folder Path} /G administrators:F
Note: please replace {Folder Path} with the real folder path.
After that, please try again.
Also, test whether you can remove it in
Safe Mode.
Hope this helps.
Vincent Wang
TechNet Community Support