Windows 11 Bitlocker - cannot boot

BillyLinux · Oct 27, 2023

Marie SWE sent me over to you nerds from Linux Mint forums. They tell me Bree and a few more will just smile then.

Here is what I posted over there so you have the same story.

I am seeking help in desperation and much hope.

In the process of trying to improve the speed of a Lenovo laptop circa 12 months old, running windows 11 in s mode; I made some quite good improvements. On a roll, I decided to try a USB stick that had latest LM Edge on it created by Belena Etcher on a different machine. It all worked fine, wifi card, sound card, touchpad, etc.
I noticed in the file manager it could see the windows drive, but it needed a password to mount that drive. Didn't have it.

So I shutdown LM and removed the usb stick after the prompt.

Disaster though. Trying to reboot the system reports the disk is locked by bitlocker and it requires some password/key to unlock. Of course, I don't know it. I didn't install win11 - it was on it when the laptop was bought from a well known High Street retailer.

In an ideal world I would want to recover from this disk that isn't working all my files/data and boot from the hard disk again without any hassle.

Has anyone got any tried and trusted procedures I can take?

.

echo2446 · Oct 27, 2023

Hello and welcome to the forum,

Do you have a Microsoft account? Maybe you key is there. Look for additional info here:

* Find BitLocker Recovery Key in Windows 11 Tutorial
* Finding your BitLocker recovery key in Windows - Microsoft Support

Typically, when you start Windows on a brand new installation, if BitLocker is enabled, it will ask you about your Microsoft account and/or about creating a recovery key on a USB. If you had done either or both, you most likely would be able to recover.

Without finding the recovery key that is backed up somewhere, there is pretty much no hope. For any encryption file system (BitLocker, EFS), always remember to back up recovery key / certificate / whatever secret there is to backup (and the data itself). Otherwise, when a disaster strikes, there is no way out.

glasskuter · Oct 27, 2023

By default, Bitlocker device encryption gets turned on during out of box experience when using Windows 11 Home and a MS account. Login to your MS account here to retrieve your BDE key https://account.microsoft.com/ Without this key, there's nothing you can do except a clean install.

If you are able to get into Windows after recovering your key you can disable BDE if you wish. To disable BDE:
Type and search [Device encryption settings] in the Windows search bar, then click [Open]
On the Device encryption field, set the option to [Off]
Confirm whether you need to turn off device encryption, select [Turn off] to disable the device encryption function

Since standard Bitlocker and Bitlocker device encryption are not exactly the same thing, it doesn't help folks in understanding it. With standard Bitlocker offered in PRO the user can choose which drives to encrypt. With BL device encryption, ALL drives are encrypted.

BillyLinux · Oct 27, 2023

VMT for the responses; most illuminating. I did manage to solve the problem but it took a lot of sleuthing and guesswork to find account name and matching password.