EFS 2003 Recovery Agent

[athome]

Hello Fellow IT Staff and Associates,

I have a bit of a sticky problem with EFS on a customer's Small Business Server. We are unable to encrypt files on both the server and the clients. I have read all the documentation on how to create a recovery agent and all, but my problem comes from two errors.

1) On the clients, the error is that there are invalid characters in the recovery key.

2) On the server, there are no recovery agents.

3) When adding a recovery agent, all accounts state that I cannot use them.

Background:

I bought the server from DELL and it was preinstalled. SMS 2003(pre SP1) back in 2004. The administrative account that I use is the original account on the machine used in setting it up. The customer doesn't have broadband access due to location, but used dialup through one of the clients to get email and browse the net when needed. The server does not host any other services other than DHCP and storage of their files.

Recently, a new manager has asked for a way to encrypt files for privacy reasons and I suggested using EFS for this purpose.

I would like to use EFS and need to create a recovery agent, yet my errors are preventing this from happening. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have done everything that Microsoft has suggested in their knowledge base and am now looking for help with forums.

Thanks

athome :blushing

Edited April 10, 2008 by athome