(W10) Unable to apply NTFS filesystem encryption - says "directory name is invalid" no matter what

Nazo

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 2, 2002
Messages
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So I'm suddenly running into a strange problem. Any time I attempt to set a file or directory to be encrypted, Windows says it is unable to encrypt because "the directory name is invalid." The strange thing is, if I create a file on a root of a partition -- say C:\test.fil -- and attempt to encrypt that, it says the same thing even though that isn't even in a directory but is, in fact, the root. Now, in the past I had imported some old certificates and had some troubles along the way, so I thought perhaps something went wrong with one of them and I deleted them from the certificate manager (I don't think I have anything left using the old keys anyway.) However this had absolutely no effect. Same error. Running cipher /e in a command console produces the same error message pretty much word for word (I was hoping it would at least provide more details, but sadly it does not.)

Most of the time I prefer to use something external such as VeraCrypt for reliability in different environments and reproducibility, but there are rare times where filesystem encryption is a little better for specific use cases, so I would like to try to figure out what is going on. However, the error message leaves very little by way of clues and my attempts to google it have not turned up any useful results. I checked the event viewer but just couldn't find anything in there either, so I don't even know where else to look.
 
Same thing happen under another account?

Maybe profile corruption, or something tied to your profile, maybe a new one will work
 
Sorry, it took me a bit to get to try this. It seems creating a new account and logging in as that account still yields the exact same error when attempting to encrypt something. I still suspect it's an issue with the key store or something along those lines, but don't know enough of the inner workings of Windows to try to fix that.
 
When it reports a 'The directory name is invalid' error in Windows 10, the first thing you can try is to re-insert or replug the external hard drive, USB, or SD card via another port.
I'm sorry, I don't know any nice way to say this. You necroed a year old post to literally say "have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in again"? At least if you're going to necro an old post actually read it. Please.
 
I'm sorry, I don't know any nice way to say this. You necroed a year old post to literally say "have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in again"? At least if you're going to necro an old post actually read it. Please.
You're responding to a bot. :)
 
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