Solved BSOD won't restart and C: drive is locked because of BitLocker

Recently I've been letting my laptop battery get low to about 7%, and I got a notification about scanning for drive errors. I tried scanning with sfc, DISM, and chkdsk, but the scans couldn't finish unless I restarted. I had some stuff on my computer that I didn't want to close. Eventually my computer froze and I couldn't do anything.

So, I did a force-shutdown. That's when either the BSOD happened or when I was promoted to enter the recovery key, I'm not sure. Anyway, at first I clicked to skip the locked drive, and I got to the Automatic Repair screen. I went to command prompt and tried to run those commands again, since by now, the stuff I wanted to keep open was probably gone. However, in command prompt, I was in the X: drive, which I think is the recovery drive. I tried typing "C:" and then hitting enter, but it said the drive was locked with BitLocker, and BitLocker had to be disabled in Control Panel.

So, I tried to open control panel. I searched online how to open it in command prompt, but nothing worked. Then I realized that it probably wasn't working because control panel is probably in the locked C: drive and not the X: drive.

So, I finally got the recovery key and it got to the BSOD after diagnosing the PC. But instead of saying it would restart after it was done, it said, "You can restart." I didn't know how to, so I just held down the power button again to shut it down. It seemed to turn off as soon as I pressed the button rather than after I held it down for a few seconds. I thought maybe the power button was what I had to press to restart it, but I don't think it turned back on on its own.

BSOD Info:

Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart.
You can restart.

Stop code: SYSTEM_THREAD_EXECEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

What failed: tcpip.sys


Thank you!

Hi, welcome

Someone more experienced in BSOD’s will come along.



At the bottom of that tutorial is a list of other tutorials.


As for the BSOD posting and getting help. It quite clearly stated at the top as you were creating this thread:

Lots of treads about the internet about your BSOD error, most all pointing to incorrect driver issues:

"SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" tcpip.sys

I agree that code points to a network driver.

Regarding bitlocker. You should be able to disable it from the recovery environment.

Turn off computer. Hold down shift key and turn machine own. (and keep it held down) until you see recovery options.

• Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command prompt.
• In the command prompt, use the following command to check the BitLocker status of the C: Drive:
  • manage-bde -status c:
  • (Note: replace C: with drive letter of your drive)
• If the status is returned as locked, you must use the following command to unlock it using your recovery password:
  • manage-bde -unlock c: -rp xxxxxxxxxxxx (xxxxxxxxxx is your 48-digit recovery password ) Note the spaces.
• Once the drive is unlocked, you must use the following command to suspend protection:
  • manage-bde -protectors -disable c:
• Exit and reboot.
• The computer should now successfully boot Windows. However, this will only handle the bitlocker issue. It won't fix a bad driver preventing windows from booting.

I clean installed Windows 11. It's working fine so far. Thank you!