Help! Used decrypt OS on an unencrypted drive

[Sam Jones]

I tried to use Veracrypt 1.23 to do a system encryption on Windows 10. The pretest rebooted my computer to a screen where I was asked for my password and pim. They were sucessfully validated but the screen would hang for a while before rebooting my computer into the same screen again. I was stuck in a loop and couldn't boot to Windows so I tried some options from my rescue disk to restore the original bootloader and remove the veracrypt one. I was still stuck in the same loop so I panicked and thought some thing got encrypted. I made a huge mistake and used restore os headers and decrypt os. Is there any way I can restore my files? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Philip Smith]

Have you tried using a bootable file recovery program?

Never keep important files on the same partition that you have the operating system on, Just in case of events like have happened.
Keep important files on a seperate partition..

[Sam Jones]

I used a linux live usb to look inside the drive. I can't see any files on the system I tried to encrypt (c:) but I can see files on another partition (d:) since the system encryption option on veracrypt didn't apply to the entire drive on my computer. When I used restore os headers and decrypt os, I think they encrypted my files with my rescue drive. Is there any way to fix this?

[Philip Smith]

Has the linux live an option to recover files from a formatted drive or something like that?

[Mounir IDRASSI]

@sj123 : From your description, it looks lik you decrypted the disk although it was not encrypted. Some time ago, I helped a person recover from such mistake by developping a tool that would create a modified Rescue Disk from the original one used for the wrong decryption and this modified Rescue Disk will provide a decrypt function will revert the previous wrong decryption.

This tool is called VeraRescue and you can download it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/veracrypt/files/Contributions/ (you will find both VeraRescue.zip and VeraRescue.zip.sig).

Important information and warning:

• The signature of the VeraRescue executable must be first verified by right clicking on the file and going to "Digital Signature" panel.
• In case of EFI configuration, Secure Boot must be disabled for the modified Rescue Disk to work since its content is not signed by Microsoft.
• This tool supposes that the the disk that was wrongly decrypted was not modified in any way after the wrong decryption finished.
• The machine should be in the same configuration wth the same connected drives when the wrong decryption occured.
• As with any operation that modifies disk content, it is strongly advises to backup disk content through disk imaging software in case of failure during the course of the operation.

[Sam Jones]

@idrassi Thank you for releasing this tool. I finally got a chance to try it. I used the decrypt function but it didn't do anything. 'Done' was displayed a few seconds after starting the decryption. I think I need to use the 'Restore os headers' before decrypting but the rescue disk created by the tool doesn't have this function.