Migrating from Win7Pro with multiple users, encrypted files?

I have two users installed on my Win7Pro system. How does the migration
to Win10 handle them?

I also have a handful of files belonging to one user that are encrypted
using the Win7 EFS feature. What happens to them? Are the certificates
automatically re-created, or would it be safest to un-encrypt them before
performing the migration?

I've searched, but I guess my google skills aren't up to the task.

--
St. Paul, MN

Bert wrote:
I have two users installed on my Win7Pro system. How does the migration
to Win10 handle them?

I also have a handful of files belonging to one user that are encrypted
using the Win7 EFS feature. What happens to them? Are the certificates
automatically re-created, or would it be safest to un-encrypt them before
performing the migration?

I've searched, but I guess my google skills aren't up to the task.


The keywords would be "EFS best practices".

That's how you find articles on what IT guys do
when dealing with encryption.

One thing they make, is a recovery disc. That could
be a floppy or a USB key (or preferably, two pieces
of media for redundancy). You keep those in a safe place.

In the event of a catastrophe (current OS broken),
the recovery disc is supposed to give you access
to the files. And the best practices articles will
tell you how.

*******

You can use the empirical approach to upgrading.

Make an exact copy of the drive (sector by sector
if necessary), then do the upgrade. If the upgrade is
a flop, restore from your backup. It'll cost you some
temporary storage space for the backup.

Win10 Upgrade Install moves Windows to Windows.old.
And makes a new Windows. You would not think the user_dir
would matter that much, but the installer would expect
to examine the user profiles (reg file in home dir?).
Otherwise, it would never get tripped up on movement
of home directories, unless it did some looking. If
you move stuff around in Windows (even though the
tech is there to do it), the installer can fail and
back out.

But for the data files themselves, I don't see a
reason for the installer to monkey with them.

I can certainly imagine how EFS assets could be "lost"
in the transition (lost key), but as long as EFS is still
backward compatible from win10 to the old OS, the
recovery disc procedure should handle the fallout.

P.S. I don't use encryption. I haven't a clue
what you do. And me saying "just be careful"
isn't going to help :-)

Good luck,
Paul