This article details how to recover a forgotten or lost passphrase for a PGP Whole Disk Encrypted computer.

Beginning with PGP Encryption Desktop 10, PGP Whole Disk Encrypted system users can locally recover forgotten or lost passphrases by entering answers to security questions on the PGP BootGuard screen. These security questions are created when creating a passphrase user during encryption of your disk.

Before you can use local PGP Whole Disk Encryption passphrase recovery feature, you must create your security questions. You can customize the five security questions so that the answers are something that only you would know.

If you then forget your passphrase, you can reset your passphrase by correctly answering three of the five security questions you created when you set up your passphrase user.

In PGP Encryption Server managed environments, this feature allows users to recover their passphrase locally without needing to contact an administrator to use a Whole Disk Recovery Token (WDRT) to recover their passphrase.

To Recover your passphrase

1. On the PGP BootGuard screen, use the arrow keys to select Forgot Passphrase from the menu and press Enter.
2. Select a username from the list and press Enter.
3. Type the answer(s) to your security question(s) and press Enter.
4. After correctly answering 3 of the 5 questions, you can reset your PGP Whole Disk Encryption passphrase.