Privacy and Security Turn Off BitLocker for Drive in Windows 11

The simple DOS commands in OPTION THREE work fine for ancient relics like me.


In OPTION ONE, I can't see any BitLocker (BL) commands in the context menu.


In OPTION TWO, step 1. the "BitLocker Drive Encryption icon" is not presented. Google says "you don't have the right edition of Windows." I have Win 11 Home.

However, Google also gave me several (at least two from memory) methods of arriving at a window containing the command "Turn off BL" - exactly as in this tutorial. None of these commands worked as expected. (Of course, if the "Turn off BL" command had earlier worked silently, then my later attempts to turn off BL would have shown the command "Turn on BL" )

For the BL command, I saw exactly the same blue text as in your screenshots. Can't remember about the icon.

Note 1: I'm a "reduced privilege" Admin on my own machine. In other words, I get the UAC prompt occasionally. But I saw no UAC prompt for the BL command.

Note 2:The "Turn off BL" command appears at the end of of several other possible chains. In each case, there's zero response.

Here's an example:

- Settings > System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & Volumes > C: > Properties > BitLocker > Turn on BitLocker (I see that command, because I've turned BL off. And no - I don't want to test it !!)

Note 3: I hope no-one thinks that there's any criticism of Shawn in this post. He recorded what he saw, and I recorded what I saw. His screenshots are sufficient proof.

Can I ask why would I want to turn off Bitlocker? Is there some positives to it or..?

imanlien2020 said:

Can I ask why would I want to turn off Bitlocker? Is there some positives to it or..?

Click to expand...

Hello,

Normally, you wouldn't turn off BitLocker for security reasons, but there may be times you need to temporarily suspend or turn off BitLocker for the OS drive to prevent it from interfering with things like a firmware update.

Hello @OldGrantonian,

If you have a Home edition of Windows, you wouldn't have options 1 and 2 available.

Instead, you would have Device Encryption below. Options 3 and 4 would still turn off Device Encryption though since it's basically a lite version of BitLocker.

My Computer (click below) came with BitLocker turned ON.

For security reasons it remains turned ON.

Brink said:

Hello,

Normally, you wouldn't turn off BitLocker for security reasons, but there may be times you need to temporarily suspend or turn off BitLocker for the OS drive to prevent it from interfering with things like a firmware update.

Click to expand...

This is rather a matter of opinion.

I have two laptops - main one for home use (more powerful device), supplementary one for travel

I do not see any real point in bitlocking my home use device. OK, always a risk that laptop gets stolen but very low risk.

In fact, there is not much point in bitlocking my travel laptop as it has an emmc drive and surprisingly a TP2. So drive will automatically unlock if user gets past login password.

In the end bitlocker really only protects you against user stealing drive independent of laptop, which cannot be done with emmc drive.

You can of course use a bitlocker pin (different to password pin), to provide another layer of protection if a laptop is stolen.

I also have a company issued laptop with removable SSD, and it makes sense that this is bitlocked i.e. if laptop is stolen (I travel back and forth to office with this so nore risk of theft), users could not access company data (assuming they do not get past login stage).