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I was running EFSINFO on my WinXP SP3 machine today, trying to find any EFS-encrypted files on the system. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my C:\xampp\htdocs\ directory is both NTFS-compressed AND EFS-encrypted! No joke here, I have the screenshot below, the directory view (clearly in "blue" signifying encryption, the GUI checkboxes BOTH checked, and the printout of the EFSINFO command (redirected to a text file).

I rebooted and nothing changed, so I'm terribly confused, I was under the impression that NTFS compression and encryption were mutually exclusive? I even pulled the drive and put it into a different machine to see if it was a Windows error. But no, the second machine gave the same display; its both encrypted and compressed, at the same time.

Now here's my question... What do I do? Despite the "wow didn't know that could happen" factor, this is clearly "wrong" and something needs to be fixed. I don't want to risk damaging something, so I was leery of just unchecking the encryption box without first consulting to see if there are any possible side effects. Has anyone seen/dealt with a similar issue before?

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Do you have any junctions pointing to the htdocs directory? Attempting to set attributes on junctions while the directory has different permissions can sometimes lead to weird situations such as the one you describe.

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Excellent, that was it! I had a junction in a compressed folder and the encryption flag was set on the directory. Thanks! – Unsigned Mar 31 '11 at 13:30
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There's a phrase on this post that's interesting:

NTFS compression and encryption are actually mutually exclusive - you can have either, or neither, or even encryption for some files on a drive and compression for some other files, but you can't have both at once for the same files.

My emphasis.

Have you checked the files in that folder? It could be that there are some files compressed and other files encrypted and the folder properties UI is reacting to that.

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Nope, I ran EFSINFO again just on that directory to be sure. Everything inside is compressed, nothing is encrypted. Even if that was the case, the folder properties GUI should only show the folder's properties, not its contents. I ran a few tests to be sure. – Unsigned Mar 27 '11 at 22:27
No, the folder properties will not just show the folder's properties, it'll show the contents too. – Randolph West Mar 27 '11 at 23:09
Not trying to be argumentative, but my folders' encrypt/compress attributes remain consistently static, regardless of whatever files I move into them. – Unsigned Mar 29 '11 at 4:09
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