Decryption failed: Risk of Data Loss
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Hey all!
I have been getting an error each time I restart my Windows 11 PC and open up Vivaldi.... and I have no clue how to fix it.
Reinstalling Vivaldi did not work.However, when I was messing around with Vivaldi's files, I found that deleting the Local State folder gets rid of this error (only on Vivaldi startup), though I still need to re-log in to all my accounts.
Any clue what's wrong? All help is appreciated!
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@Morb
Hi, did you reinstall Windows or copy over your Vivaldi user profile to a new system?
Passwords are encrypted with the Windows user ID, if it change you get this error. -
Have you tried doing a clean installation of vivaldi and synchronizing the profiles?
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@mib2berlin huh, interesting. No, I have not tried to reinstall Windows.
Though I caught wind of Windows being a possible issue and made a new user, but I didn't have time to explore that fix afterwards.I've done various chkdsk's in the meantime, and my C drive seems to be fine.
So it's both interesting and infuriating to think that Windows might be the issue (as it often is...). Corrupt User profile in that case, I'm guessing? -
@Morb Broken Windows encryption key store (DPAPI) may be a cause of such issue. I have no idea to repair this easily.
Windows provides a encryption key for different Chromium related browsers (like Vivaldi) and when the data is broken, Vivaldi warns and it can not decrypt some data.
⇒ https://dimitrisper.xyz/posts/tech/dpapi-blobs/ -
@joaquinbarriobenito hey! Yes I have. And it unfortunately did not fix the issue
I am suspecting a corrupted Windows user profile atm....
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@Morb said in Decryption failed: Risk of Data Loss:
I am suspecting a corrupted Windows user profile atm....
Yes, that is what i suspect.
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@DoctorG ugh, that sounds like a huge pain. Maybe the fix would just be switching to linux
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@Morb The best way is to store login in a extra local password manager (f.ex. KeePassXC, Keepass2) with a own password to have a password store you can use in such cases.
On Linux restore is is easier as you can backup Vivaldi profile folder and Linux KdeWallet or GNOME keyring data.
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@Morb If changing your password outside the regular Ctrl+Alt+Del method, i.e. for instance through the
lusrmgr
UI, the DPAPI key will be reset and the browser's decryption will fail. There are probably other ways the DPAPI key will be reset - obviously like creating a new user or changing the password from the command line.The
Local State
file contains the second part of the key to decrypt your cookies+passwords, as the value of theencrypted_key
object.
So by deleting this file, you definitely made it impossible to decrypt your data. But I'm assuming you did this after the warning message was given?Vivaldi is a Chromium browser and as such stores encrypted passwords+cookies exactly like other Chromium browsers, Chrome, Edge etc.
And it's just as prone to breakage if any part of the decryption process is missing.
Vivaldi is just the only browser to actually warn you about it - other browsers will just open with zero passwords stored.The error message however, is not all that helpful.
In Windows there is no way to "repair" your DPAPI key once it's been changed, and no way to back it up and restore it.
I also doubt most Linux users know how to "repair" their keystore (whatever that means), or keep a backup of this important store, or even how to access and view its content. -
@DoctorG oh, yeah! No worries -- I had made a backup before deleting anything. So my rummaging and deleting was definitely done in a responsible manner
So yeah. I will try to migrate / fix my user profile and come back here with results once I get to it!