Can't Remove Pointsec for PC: Encryption Process Active

Here is a tip that might come in handy sometime. I ran into a problem the other day that required me to uninstall Pointsec from a computer that was still in the process of encrypting. When I went to Add/Remove programs and tried to take it off, I was given an error message that Pointsec couldn't be uninstalled because the encryption process is still active. I had a similar incident one time where the encryption process just wouldn't stop. So how do you make it stop?

The easy way is to double click on your recovery file, create a boot disk, and decrypt the portion of the drive that has been encryted. When you boot up you will be able to uninstall Pointsec from the Add/Remove programs Controls Panel.

But what if the recovery file hasn't been written to the network? That was part of the problem that I ran into the other day. For some reason this computer wasn't able to access the network share that was specified in the installation profile. So the encryption process was active, but it was never going to finish because it couldn't access the share. Not to worry, there is a local copy of the recovery file that you use if you can't get to the one on the server (or if the server copy hasn't been written yet). Take a look in the folder c:\documents and settings\all users\application data\pointsec\pointsec for pc\ You should see a file with the same name as the computer name and an extension of .REC. I haven't looked to see where the local file is kept on Vista machines, but I would guess that the path is very similar.