Disabling File and Folder Encryption

On Windows Vista and later, you can prevent users from encrypting their files in two ways. First, by running the command fsutil behavior set disableencryption 1 you can disable EFS on all NTFS volumes on your machine, so by deploying this command using a logon script you can disable EFS on targeted users’ computers.

And second, since all the above fsutil command does is to modify NtfsDisableEncryption, a REG_DWORD value found under HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlFileSystem, this means that you could also create a custom ADMX file to deploy this registry modification using Group Policy. For more information on how to create a custom ADMX file, see KB 918239

Note that if either method is used, the registry modification doesn’t take effect until after a reboot. In addition, before you disable encryption you should decrypt any previously encrypted files and folders on the machine, otherwise you won’t be able to access them once encryption has been disabled.

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Article written by MyComputerAid.com