Mystery encryption key in Backup Exec 12

[rwvoss]

We use backup exec 12 on a couple of remote servers to back them up to a local USB drive.  Everything was going well until one of the servers crashed and it had to be reloaded.  Now, I try to catalog the data and I keep getting an error that it can't find the encryption key.  The problem is when the software was originally set up we never set up encryption on the backups and didn't have a key. 

I was wondering if anyone has seen this before and if there is any way around it?

Thanks in advance...

[Colin_Weaver]

Was this 12.x server ever upgraded from say 10.x or 9.x?

Would media passwords have been used with the older versions of BE prior to the upgrade?

Reason for question is if you upgarde a job with media  passwords and don't recreate the job (or remove the passwords first) then the media password remains in the job even though the job configuration will not show you the option. This can cause odd security requests when cataloging media although I am not sure it would be an encryption message.

BTW if it really is an encryption key then you won't be able to extract the data without it.

[rwvoss]

Nope - this was a fresh install of 12.  We actually set up two servers at the same time and I have been using the other server to check settings and I can't figure where the encryption might be coming from.

[Colin_Weaver]

I take it you don't have a copy of the backup exec database from before the crash anywhere?

Either the .bak file or the mdf/ldf file combination?

[rwvoss]

Unfortunately, no.  It was a poor model, but we backed up everything on that server using backup exec to those external hard drives.  So, I guess I probably do have them, but they are stuck behind the encryption key like everything else.

[Colin_Weaver]

Well I have not heard of an encryption key being created by accident would any other admins have been testing things on the server and enabled a key that they then forgot to disable. Especially if they enabeld a key with a default option which would then have affected every new job created?

I have also had a chat with a colleague and he has confirmed that BE needs a passphrase to encrypt this would not have happened without human intervention