While the encryption is an excellent tool to safeguard your data on your system, facing problem while decrypting the samething is never appreciated. According to some recent reports, there are a bunch of Windows users who have seen this “A Problem is Preventing This Folder From Being Encrypted” message on your computer. You just have to follow these solutions to troubleshoot the problem on your system.

Fix 1 – Unlock the drive

If the drive is locked, you will notice a lock sign on that specific drive in the File Explorer.

Step 1 – You have to open the File Explorer. Do that using the Win+E hotkeys.

Step 2 – Next, go to the “This PC” from the left tab.

Step 3 – Check whether the affected drive name contains the lock (🔒) sign with the drive name.

Step 4 – Next, right-tap that drive and tap “Unlock Drive“.

Step 5 – As the drives are locked using a password, you have to provide the password there and click “Unlock” to unlock the drive.

This unlocking process may increase depending on the size of the drive.

After unlocking the drive, you can use it again and try to encrypt it following your preferred way.

Fix 2 – Revoke the password protection

Decrypt the folder from the context menu directly.

Step 1 – Open the File Explorer any way you prefer.

Step 2 – Next, reach the folder that you need to decrypt.

Step 3 – Right-tap the same folder and choose to open the “Properties” of the same.

Step 4 – Go to the “General” tab.

Step 5 – Next, click to open the “Advanced” tab.

Step 6 – In the Advanced Attributes panel, uncheck the “Encrypt contents to secure data” checkbox.

Step 7 – Tap “OK” to change the settings.

All that is left to do is to restart your computer after this step. After this, give the encryption process another try.

Fix 3 – Own the folder

You should check the ownership of the folder and need to alter the settings if needed.

Step 1 – Get to the File Explorer tab and reach the location of the folder.

Step 2 – Right-tap the specific folder and click “Properties“.

Step 3 – Tap the “Security” settings.

Step 4 – Click the “Advanced” menu to open the advanced security settings of the folder.

Step 5 – Now, you can see the current owner of the specified folder. So, use the “Change” next to ‘Owner’ to change the ownership.

Step 6 – Simply, type “administrator” in the blank box and tap “Check Names” to let the computer autocorrect the group name automatically.

Step 7 – Tap “OK” to change the settings.

Step 8 – Getting back to the Advanced Security tab, check the “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects” box.

Step 9 – Just click “Apply” and “OK” consecutively to apply the changes and complete the ownership alteration process.

Step 10 – There will be a warning message about the possible complications in the process. Ignore that and click “OK“.

Restart the machine and retry encrypting the folder/file once more.

Fix 4 – Disable the BitLocker encryption

The BitLocker Encryption on the specified drive is responsible for this problem. So, you can turn it off from the Control Panel.

Step 1 – Hit the Windows button and type “control“.

Step 2 – Next, open the “Control Panel” to open it up.

Step 3 – As the Control Panel opens up, go to the ‘View by:’ and set it to the “Large icons“.

Step 4 – Now, open the “BitLocker Drive Encryption” tool to access that.

Step 5 – Here, you will be able to view the current status of all the BitLocker Encryption on all the drives.

Step 6 – If the BitLocker Encryption is enabled on the system drive, use the “Turn off BitLocker Encryption” feature in there.

Or,

Step 7 – You can disable this BitLocker Encryption for the specific drive. To do that, expand the drive that is locked (It will show you the ‘BitLocker On‘ prompt).

Step 8 – Later, tap “Unlock drive” to revoke the BitLocker Encryption from the specified drive.

Step 9 – You have to input the BitLocker password and disable the protection on your computer.

After this, you can attempt to encrypt the drive on your system.