Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

cipher

Synopsis

Displays or modifies the encryption state of files and directories on NTFS volumes. This command is new to Windows 2000.

Syntax

cipher [/e | /d] [/s:directory] [/a] [/i] [/f] [/q] [/h] [/k] 
[pathname [...] ]

Options

none

Lists encryption state of current directory and its files.

pathname [...]

Specifies files or directories to be processed.

/e

Encrypts specified directories.

/d

Decrypts specified directories.

/s: directory

Recursively processes all subdirectories in specified directory (cannot be used more than once in a single command).

/a

Processes specified files. (If there is no matching file, the switch is ignored.)

/i

Ignores errors during processing.

/f

Forces encryption/decryption of specified files even if they have already been encrypted/decrypted.

/q

Switches to quick (nonverbose) output.

/h

Shows files with Hidden or System attributes. (These files are not encrypted or decrypted.)

/k

Creates a new EFS key for the current user (use this switch alone).

Examples

To view the encryption state of files and directories in the root of H: drive:

                     cipher h:\*
Listing h:\
New files added to this directory will not be encrypted.

U doc1.txt
E doc2.txt
U pub

To encrypt the pub folder shown earlier:

                     cipher /e h:\pub
Encrypting directories in h:\

pub                 [OK]

1 directorie(s) within 1 directorie(s) were encrypted.

New files added to pub now will be encrypted. To encrypt only the file doc3.txt in pub :

                     cipher /e /a h:\pub\doc3.txt Encrypting files in h:\pub\ doc3.txt [OK] 1 file(s) ...