Windows 7 partition suddenly won't boot - how to recover encrypted files?
Hello,
For the past 2 years I have been using Windows 7 Home Ultimate on a partition on my early 2014 MacBook Air.
As of last week, the Windows partition will no longer boot. I didn't make any changes to either the Windows or Mac side (e.g. attempting to re-size a partition). In fact I haven't even logged into the Mac side for more than a year.
When Windows loads it crashes before getting to the Windows logo screen, and then offers a choice to Start Windows Normally (which just causes it to crash again) or Launch Startup Repair. At this stage the keyboard works, so it's possible to select Launch Startup Repair. That takes me into Startup Repair, but then the keyboard stops working (and neither does the trackpad or connecting an external keyboard/mouse), so it's impossible to progress beyond the first screen of Startup Repair as you must select an option.
I can press F8 just before startup crashes to see some additional options (e.g. Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking etc) but all of those either cause another crash or get stuck on a 'please wait' screen.
I finally managed to create a Windows 7 USB to attempt booting from there (this was a very time-consuming and frustrating process as the Bootcamp Assistant appears to be highly unreliable, frequently returning error messages). I can now can select to boot from the USB from by pressing alt before startup, but when I select it as the startup disk I get taken to an Install Windows 7 screen but again all inputs (keyboard/trackpad/external devices) stop working so it's impossible to select language or progress at all.
Ideally I would like to get the Windows partition booting and accessible again, but in the meantime I urgently need to recover data from it. However - the data that I need to access is encrypted with EFS, which is native in Windows 7 Home Ultimate. Therefore, I can see the folders & files I would like to recover through Finder / Windows HD on the Mac side, but because of the encryption I don't have read access to them. From Finder, I can successfully open non-encrytped files from the Windows side (e.g. the sample pictures in My Pictures folder).
I could unlock the encrypted files on another Windows machine as I have the EFS recovery key saved on a USB, but I can't figure out how I could get them off the non-booting partition on my Macbook, short of having the hard drive physically removed and implanted into another machine?
Thanks in advance.
MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), null
