word to the wise

don't encrypt things using microsoft's encryption unless you know exactly what you are doing, and take all precautions necessary, like backing up your encryption keys. because if you don't, and windows crashes, requiring a reinstall, you are fucked. because microsoft wanted to make encryption seemless to the user, windows handles all the keys, and they are tied to the profile, which will change when you reinstall, resulting in a complete loss of data. of course you can recover the data by using the encryption recovery agent, but that was the administrator account on the system you just reinstalled on, so your still fucked. and since microsoft uses 128bit encryption, you can't even crack the key in a reasonable amount of time(think years and years).

why do i know this? because i had a customer that i had to reinstall windows on their pc, and later discovered that they had encrypted a bunch of files(they didn't even remember that they had done this), which are now dead to them.

so the moral of this story is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and you should always fully understand the consequences of your actions.

the main question i have is why doesn't microsoft tell the user all these facts when they try to encrypt a file, instead of it just being a check box with no(or little) warning?

wow, there, are, just, way, too, many, out, of, place, comma's, in, this, p,o,s,t,.,

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