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PGP Management Guide (Using PGP)

November 28th, 2008, by Thomas Milligan

The Guides

• How to install PGP
• How do I create a new PGP Key Pair?
• How to Process Secure Orders with PGP
• How to export or backup an exisiting PGP Key Pair
• How to Import an existing PGP Key Pair

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I can’t remember my password – can you reset it?

A: No – PGP passwords cannot be recovered or reset, if you have lost the password you must generate a new key pair

Q: I generated a new key pair and can decrypt orders fine – but older ones won’t decrypt

A: This is because orders can only be decrypted using the key pair that encrypted them, even if the name on the key and the password are the same.

Q: I’ve lost my key, what should I do?

A: If you have lost your key you must generate a new pair.

Q: When I click the decrypt button in Outlook nothing happens

A: This is down to an incompatibility between PGP and recent versions of Outlook- decrypt the mail using the technique shown above.

Q: I have no padlock icon in the bottom right

A: This is generally either because you have quit PGP Tray or you have just installed PGP and haven’t restarted yet. Restart your machine and it should re-appear. If you are running Windows XP it may have been hidden – click on the small arrow in the bottom right to expand the icon list.

When generating new key-pairs for a new user, errors messages are displayed saying that the account is read-only and can not be written. (This happens particularly on Windows 7)

A: This is because normal users, by default, do not have full control under security settings of the keyrings directory. To enable full control security:

• Step 1: Find the directory to the “PGP Keyrings” folder, commonly at “C:/Program Files/Network Associates/PGP”
• Step 2: Right-clock this folder and select “Properties” in the pop-up menu.
• Step 3: Select the “Security” tab page.
• Step 4: Click the “Edit” button to change permission settings.
• Step 5: Under the list of username groups, select the “Users” group.
• Step 6: Check the “Allow” checkbox corresponding “Full Control” and click Apply to save.

You should then be able to write new key-pairs without any errors under all Windows operating systems.

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