Seeing yellow padlock symbol on some of the files and folders on your Windows computer? These sign only shows up if the Windows Encryption File System or EFS is used to encrypt the files or folders on your machine. These restrict only the particular user who have put on the shackles on those folders to access those files or folders. We have shown ways how you can remove this padlock signs from the individual files or folders. Follow them to restore the default settings.
Fix 1 – Change the ownership of the file or folder
You can use this process to transfer the ownership of files or folders that has the padlock sign on them.
NOTE – Proceed with this process only if you have this problem on a limited number of files or with folders. This process can become monotonous as you have to repeat the same process for all the affected files or folders.
Step 1 – Right-click the padlocked file or folder and tap “Show more options“.
Step 2 – Then, choose the “File ownership>” from the context menu.
Step 3 – Choose the “Personal” option to transfer the ownership directly.
But, you may not see this ‘File ownership’ option in the context menu directly. So, follow the alternative approach.
Alternative Method –
Step 1 – Open the File Explorer and reach the location of padlocked files on your computer.
Step 2 – Next, right-click any such folders and tap “Properties“.
Step 3 – Go to the “Security” settings.
Step 4 – Open up the “Advanced” options.
Step 5 – Then, tap the “Change” button beside the ‘Owner:’ tab to make the changes.
Step 6 – Next, type your username in the box and hit the “Check box” there to verify and rectify it according to your system settings. Click “OK” to save that.
Step 7 – Then, check the “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects” mark.
Step 8 – Tap the “Apply” and “OK” button.
After applying these changes, you can access those files again. They won’t show up as padlocked.
Fix 2 – Revoke the encryption
[NOTE – This fix is normally applicable to folders. So, you can just move the padlocked files in a particular folder, if they are scattered around your system. Then, apply this solution on that folder.]
You can revoke the content encryption quite easily from the individual files or folders.
Step 1 – Simply, right-click the folder containing the padlocked files.
Step 2 – Next, tap the “Properties” option.
Step 3 – Go to the “General” tab.
Step 4 – Later, tap the “Advanced” settings.
Step 5 – In the Advanced Attributes panel, uncheck the “Encrypt contents to secure data” mode.
Step 6 – Tap “OK“.
Now, Windows will transfer the ownership of all the objects inside that folders. Depending upon the number of files that you have there, it can take a while.
Once you are done with this, you won’t see the padlocked files icon there.
Fix 3 – Use the terminal to decrypt the files
If none of the previous fixes have worked out for you, use the command module to decrypt the files.
Step 1 – You have to know the file path of the padlocked item.
Step 2 – So, open up the File Explorer and reach the item location.
Step 3 – Tap “Copy as path” to copy the path of the file.
Step 4 – Search for “cmd” from the search box.
Step 5 – Next, just right-click the “Command Prompt” and tap “Run as administrator” to load the terminal.
Step 6 – In the CMD terminal, input this code manually and paste the copied path of the file/folder, and hit Enter to decipher the padlocked files.
cipher /d file path
[Replace the ‘file path’ in the code with the file/folder path that you have noted before.
Example –
cipher /d "C:\Users\sambi\Downloads\Test"
]
After doing this operation, quit the CMD terminal.