Back in January Microsoft encrypted all my hard drives without saying anything. I was playing around with a dual boot yesterday and somehow aggravated Secureboot. So my C: panicked and required a 40 character key to unlock.
Your key is backed up to the Microsoft account associated with your install. Which is considerate to the hackers. (and saved me from a re-install) But if you’ve got an unactivated copy, local account, or don’t know your M$ account credentials, your boned.
Control Panel > System Security > Bitlocker Encryption.
BTW, I was aware that M$ was doing this and even made fun of the effected users. Karma.
Bit late to this thread but I know a few commands that might help if you’re stuck:
manage-bde -off C:(or any other drive) This decrypts the volume and turns off bitlockermanage-bde -lock/unlockmanage-bde -protectors -get C:(or any other drive) This displays your 48-digit key. I suggest you store it somewhere, just to be safe.Get-BitlockerVolumereveals which of your partitions are encrypted with Bitlocker.Disclaimer: I am not a terminal nerd, I just had similar problems years ago and went down the rabbit hole, used these commands and turned off bitlocker permanently. I don’t use windows anymore, but when I did, it didn’t cause any problems with bitlocker after this. If you’re concerned about your un-encrypted hard drives, consider using Veracrypt (carefully!) or similar open source encryption software.
Alright, lol, I’ll be the guy
Hey OP, ever heard of Linux?
I mean you can write your Bitlocker key down and store it safely or put it somewhere else safe… Lol
The main problem here is Bitlocker is being turned on by default on fresh 24H2 installs, most people that don’t know how to bypass the online account requirement are making burner Microsoft accounts (Boomers), therefore do not know the credentials in 3-4 years when their computer needs a repair.
Windows is the virus.
Fuck Microsoft.
I remember back in highschool a buddy encrypted his harddrive, didn’t backup his key. He Lost ALOT when I upgraded his comp
That’s not a Microsoft issue. Loose your key and the door will stay close whatever it is.
But how is that relevant to your ‘Fuck Microsoft’ if he knowingly encrypted his device, which is how you make it sound?
I’ve enabled FDE on one of my Linux devices, I’ve already had to mount the filesystem in a rescue environment once because a failed update caused the system to be unable to boot. I would also have been hosed if I had lost the encryption key. Ok not really, because that’s what backups are for, but you hopefully get the point.
From what I gather though other memes, It looks like Windows 11 is enabling Bitlocker by default.
I know, and the ‘fuck Microsoft’ is completely warranted for that. But shouting that and then coming up with a story where somebody enabled it themselves and subsequently lost their key, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Unless it was to illustrate the dangers of FDE, but in that case the point could have been made a bit clearer.
I’ve been preaching about this for a while. Many modern systems are getting bitlocker turned on by default.
If your system gets messed up, or simply won’t start because of some security vendors bad update, goodbye data. You need the recovery key, and if you don’t have it, you’ll never see your bits the the correct order again.
I got into coding in the last few days. I have a project. Bumping into this while I’m trying to learn this shit? Fuck me. You know, we could just stop using money
I can’t connect what you are saying into a coherent thread
No, we can’t. Otherwise how would people like Elon and Bezos know that they’re better than us?
/s
Their good looks, obviously
Hahahha
I just leave secure boot/bitlocker off when it comes to my home system. It wasnt something I “needed” when I was dual booting windows 10 and it’s not something I’m gonna enable now that I’m using 11.
It’s not ”leaving bitlocker off”, though. It’s ”be aware about it and turn bitlocker off manually” since it’s enabled by default in the latest updates.
That’s false. My Windows partition didn’t magically enable bitlocker and I’m on 24h2. LTSC build and local account tho.
They can’t do that legally without notifying our asking in eu
I tried having it on my new laptop for a bit. It took like a week for Windows to kill the secure boot key for my Linux partition. Even after I disabled secure boot I couldn’t get it to boot up so I had to reinstall. Just left it turned off afterwards.
Its just not worth the trouble for a home pc imo
All in the name of national security *wink
This has been happening to people randomly for years. Ysed to get calls about it all the time, and that was pre-covid
Always have backups! Doesnt matter what OS you use, stuff will break eventually.
I prefer bootable full system images to my NAS for easy restores, and online file backups, both running daily.
3-2-1 rule : 3 backups 2 different types of storage 1 copy off-site
Yup, I treat the ‘3’ as 3 copies of data, so the first copy is just my working system, and the other 2 are various backups.
This happened to me once and I had to redo my coursework over the weekend…now I use Fedora :D
Regarding your last sentence, something similar happened to me with OneDrive. I mocked people thinking surely they enabled something by mistake. Nope. The defaults and general behavior are just that wacky. Glad I’m off Microsoft now.
When I switched to a new CPU I got a bit locker message and it was one of my biggest computer scares ever. I couldn’t remember if the shop that assembled my pc would have enabled it or not. And wasn’t available to contact.
I had to take a risk. If I continued there was a 50 50 chance my shit would have been bricked. Thankfully. That shop had the foresight to NOT randomly enable features the client didn’t ask for
I ran into a similar problem after a bios update.
Turns out “this update may wipe out your bitlocker key” also means “if you don’t have bitlocker turned on, it’ll just wipe out your windows key.”
