[Question brought here from the security section]
Is there any easy way I can decrypt a folder that has been encrypted with Windows 7? I am using Ubuntu 11.10 to decrypt the folder.
From wikipedia:
Files encrypted with EFS can only be decrypted by using the RSA private key(s) matching the previously-used public key(s). The stored copy of the user's private key is ultimately protected by the user's logon password. Accessing encrypted files from outside Windows with other operating systems (Linux, for example) is not possible — not least of which because there is currently no third party EFS component driver.
EFS - Encrypting File System - is native to Windows & Microsoft. Microsoft have not released this as opensource - and no-one (as yet) has clean reversed engineered this.
I'm afraid - the only way you will be to decrypt a windows 7 file and folder encrypted using native windows encryption is via windows itself.
