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#4982 Reply

Svante
Spectator

Hi Paul (& Lucas),

I need to correct Lucas on one point. AxCrypt is a password based file encryption utility. The AxCrypt ID key pairs used are for convenience in sharing and managing passwords. You will not lose your encrypted data if you lose your key pair. You can *always* decrypt a file if you have the software and know the password that was used when the file was encrypted.

In order to ‘nuke’ AxCrypt completely, it generally suffices to uninstall it via the control panel. Nevertheless, there are scenarios where some user and configuration data could be left on the computer. AxCrypt uses the following locations:

%localappdata%\AxCrypt in the file system for user data. This is always safe to ‘nuke’, even with AxCrypt installed (temporary decryption is done here, so working files may be deleted if you delete this folder entirely, but the installation as such will not be damaged).

HKLM\Software\AxCrypt

and

HKCU\Software\AxCrypt in the registry for configuration data pertaining to the Explorer integration, and the Windows Installer engine.

(It also adds file some shell integration stuff elsewhere, but that has no impact whatsoever on the ‘nuke’ aspect, and also these are removed during uninstallation).

The standalone version of AxCrypt, which does not require installation, does not use the registry at all but only the %localappdata%\AxCrypt location.