T43 + File & Folder Encryption v2.10 = Hangs, locked fil

[Riverwide]

Hi, folks:

Be gentle - this is my first post to this wonderful forum. I'm trying to solicit similar experiences from you, if any.

I was surprised to learn that although File Encryption was possible out of the box, transparent Folder Encryption wasn't. So, I dutifully installed IBM Client Security File and Folder Encryption (FFE) v2.10 (English) (z056zis1009usaa.exe) on my brand-new T43. Installation went smoothly.

I then created a new folder, protected it, and - using Windows Explorer - copied a PDF test file into the protected folder. Double-clicked on the test PDF file, and was pleased to see no discernible negative performance overhead from folder encryption.

I then protected a folder containing Microsoft Money's .MNY data file. This folder contains a subfolder with MNY archives, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and miscellaneous other files.

Now, this is when things started getting mildly troubling.

This caused a hang, with the "Now protecting your files" message window cycling. Task Manager showed no CPU activity whatsoever after 20 minutes, so I held my breath, ended the message window process, and rebooted.

WinXP (Home) restarted fine, and files in the newly-protected Money folder were accessible to both the Microsoft Money executable and from Windows Explorer. No noticeable performance hit from the encryption. Wonderful, so I thought.

Then I attempted to run a batch program that invokes XCOPY to copy all files from my laptop to an external USB drive. This errored out, with Task Manager showing that Microsoft Money had locked a .TMP file in the protected folder. The actual Money .MNY data file copied fine; no locks.

When in doubt, reboot, so I did. Everything restarted fine, and XCOPY ran without a hitch. Not surprising, since the process locking the .TMP file couldn't (shouldn't) have been running after a reboot.

I decided to experiment to see if FFE was the source of the lock, which I haven't seen in over 8 years of using this program. So, I attempted to unprotect the folder containing the Money .MNY data file.

This is where things got really troubling.

This caused a hang, with the "Now unprotecting your files" message window cycling. Task Manager showed no CPU activity whatsoever after another nail-biting 20 minutes, so I held my breath, ended the message window process, and rebooted.

WinXP (Home) restarted fine, and files in the newly-protected Money folder were sitll accessible to both the Microsoft Money executable and from Windows Explorer. Yet another TMP file appeared and remained locked.

However, no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't unprotect that folder. Very, very troubling. I have access to my files today, but what about tomorrow? This looked to be a one-way street.

IBM Support was friendly but had very little knowledge of cryptographic theory, let alone knowledge of what the each module in the security stack was doing. Click.

I manually copied all files from the protected folder to a new one, and turned off FFE, which - as documented in the FFE README - rendered all of the formerly-encrypted folder contents unreadable. Deleted the now-useless folder full of gibberish, and attempted to explain to my wife why our investment in the super-secure Thinkpad was still a good one, despite the inability to use FFE.

Has anyone had similar problems with locked temporary files or the inability to unprotect folders with any versions of FFE? Or any other FFE success stories or problems?

Regards,
StevenC