Wordpad documents are encrypted

Question

My old laptop died with no power so hard drive removed and placed in new Windows Vista laptop.

However all my saved 'WordPad' documents are now encrypted and impossible to read.

Adobe Reader etc. docs. are fine to read

Have gone into 'windows system 32 directory and found 'write' but all that does is throw up a blank wordpad sheet to type.

Answer 1

Hello angelrose,

Thanks for using the Microsoft Answers Forum.

Will you please clarify how the drive was placed into the new laptop? Was a backup made of the data and then restored to the new laptop? Was a clean install performed of Windows Vista so that they data could then be restored? If for any reason you have taken the hard drive in its original state and placed it in the new computer without performing a clean install there is a possibility of causing damage to system files and folders as well as corrupted drivers for hardware.

Also, make sure that the documents are associated with the proper program for opening. Navigate to the WordPad documents, right click then select Open With. Browse to the proper program such as WordPad and then press OK. This process should re-associate the file with WordPad to open it correctly.

Try the suggestions above, answer the questions and let us know what you find.

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Judd

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.