Decryption Failed: Risk of Data Loss

[dmelczer]

Hello everyone.

I recently upgraded my Windows 11 installation from 23H2 to 24H2. Suddenly, I get this error message every time I open Vivaldi version 7.0.3495.10. Even if I am okay with nuking my passwords and I hit "Yes" to continue, the next time I open Vivaldi I still get this error message. I've tried reverting back to Vivaldi version 6.9, same thing. I tried an uninstall and reinstall, but still the same problem.

Any idea what I can do to get rid of this prompt once and for all? Just about every troubleshooting article I see is for Linux, not Windows.

Thank you in advance to anyone who might be able to assist!

[mib2berlin]

@dmelczer
Hi, did you reinstall Windows for upgrade?
This message appear if a user reinstall or copy the Vivaldi user profile to a different user or system.
We have an actual thread about with a detailed description what exactly happen.
If you don't care about your passwords you can try to delete the file Login Data in \App Data\Vivaldi\User Data\Default\

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/102673/default-encryption-settings-are-criminal-act/11

[sgunhouse]

@dmelczer And clear cookies, those are also encrypted. Perhaps just delete your profile folder and start over - this sounds like it might also be caused by having run Vivaldi as Administrator, as otherwise it should have cleared after you continued.

[dmelczer]

@sgunhouse said in Decryption Failed: Risk of Data Loss:

ar cookies, those are also encrypted. Perhaps just delete your profile folder and st

Thank you both for your replies!

I did not reinstall windows as part of the 24H2 upgrade. The Windows update facility saw the update available and automatically installed it.

However, something very strange happened...I went back to the laptop without rebooting it about an hour later and lo and behold things worked perfectly now. All of my passwords were still available (even though I had indicated with the error message to delete them and just move on). What I think is happening is that the process that unlocks the keystore takes extra long to start with Windows 11 24H2 for some reason. Once this process starts everything functions as expected. I'm glad I didn't lose any data (I did actually backup my whole profile before doing anything at all, so I could have always just restored later).

So, for those windows users who are having this problem, say "No" to close Vivaldi and preserve your data...and then just wait a little bit before re-opening it (on the order of minutes, although I believe that the exact time is likely to depend on the computer technology and components in use). It's very likely that your data will all be available to you after just a little wait period. I hope this helps someone else.