Tao Effect Forums

Hello,

Is there any way to retrieve a password for an encrypted folder or force it open? How about a force uninstall of Espionage? Here is the story...

I disabled Espionage 2 when I upgraded to Lion months ago. It seems as though I made a copy of my Mail folder from what Espionage had and carried on. Occasionally I would see an Espionage error when I closed Mail stating that it "couldn't encrypt the folder", but all was working fine regardless. I assumed that it was a lagging detail for the old Mail folder and just didn't have time to dig into it. Yup, my goof. Yesterday I updated several items via Apple's Software Updater and received a few error messages stating something about "corrupt extensions, contact third party for updates", but thought that I would deal with it later. When I rebooted, Mail wouldn't open. A message via the Console states:

"EspionageHelper: WARN (event_handler_for_assoc:598): denying Mail launch because we don't have any records!"

Upon opening Espionage (version 2.8.13), I immediately get the unlock screen. My password doesn't work. Now, I have another secure storage of such passwords and I am indeed using the one that I last used. I also follow a specific formula for all of my passwords in case I forget. Nothing is working. I am also unable to locate any reference to Espionage in Apple's Keychain Access.

If a password retrieval is not an option, how about a force uninstall of Espionage? All the reference I see on normal uninstalling requires a password first.

If all else fails, then I do have a backup, but it will be a few days before I can get back home.


More microchips than sense,
Dr. Z.

Update:

I have corrected the issue. I have no idea what I did to get things rolling again, because I have been retyping the same password several times, tried starting up in Safe Boot, used Disk Warrior with my main Mac in Target Disk mode, and more. For whatever reason, my password worked this last time around and I was safely able to delete Espionage 2x. Mail is now working fine. I plan to reinstall Espionage and use it's features later on.

However, I can offer that before all of my troubles began I got this error message:

"The system extension “/System/Library/Extensions/prl_usb_connect.kext” was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the product’s vendor for an update."


Peace,
Dr. Z.

Hello Zeigh,

So far I did not encounter this message, I suppose it was a mixture of events which lead to this situation. If you cannot reproduce it then we can do little about it.
In V2 you can access your disk images directly as you have to set the folder password for each folder, so if Espionage is not working you can access the disk image and open it with the password you set for that folder.
There is also a way to uninstall Espionage but this will not automatically bring your folders back, so that would not be a solution.

If you do not want to use Espionage then I strongly suggest that you remove all the folders from it so that it does not interact with the file system any more.
You can also uninstall it if you prefer, but removing the folders should be sufficient to avoid problems.

Let me know if you have further questions,
Rgds
Zsolt