Weird Encryption issue

Follow the bouncing ball on this one...it's funky.

I had a drive with dual boot partitions - WinXP and x64. I had one folder (and subfolders and files) encrypted using the native XP encryption on the WinXP. The WinXP partition crashed (no, I did not back up the dang key). I tried to re-install, but used Dell disks instead of the WGA install disk I had. An XP install is an XP install, right? Bad idea... didn't work at all.

I then built a new box with a new drive and installed Win7. I popped the dual partition drive in as a slave to pull the data off.

Oddly enough, I was able to take ownership of many of the encrypted files and folders and remove the encryption, but not for all of them. The files in question all have an "Account Unknown" user with a long hash after it in the security properties.

PROBLEM #1
I removed encryption on a directory (how I do not know or understand based on everything I've read), but it is not recognizing me as an Administrator. My user account is listed in the security properties with "Special" Permission, though every box is checked (and grayed out) when I check the individual permissions. If I add my account with full control and check the box to replace child permissions, I get an Access Denied error. However, if I click on each individual file in the directory and go to security, it says I must be an administrative user (yes, I am an Admin). I click continue and add myself with Full Control, and everything works fine. There area TON of files. Why can I not apply this and have the child objects propagate?


PROBLEM #2
This doesn't work on all the directories for some reason. I removed encryption on the main folders, but some directories will not let me change the individual files using the above described method. Is thre any way to extract the Encryption certificate from the non-bootable WinXP partition? I can browse the files, but don't have a clue as to what I'm looking for.


I don't get why it's working at all for some. Probably has to do with the box crashing...

Any ideas on freeing the rest of the files?