Bitlocker request on boot.

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My laptop PC crashed in the middle of doing an update.  Now when I power on I get a screen that requests a bitlocker key.  I don’t have one or ever had one.  My thought was to just reinstall Win 11 but, the drive is not visible.  The install works fine but it cannot find the drive to install on.  I tried disabling the TPM module and installing Win 10 but had the same results.   Help!!

Thanks.

 

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Home or Pro?

Local or Microsoft account?

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Not “if.” When.

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Unfortunately, Win11 Pro encrypts a Win11 install by default, without the User’s knowledge.

Do you have an image backup from before you tried all those things you can restore?
If you did not activate Bitlocker, the key is supposed to be available on the drive (search this site for the how-to info).
If you activated Bitlocker and you are using an MS ID, the key should be on you accoub=nt on the MS server if you log in.

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Most PCs come with a recovery partition that you can boot to and then reinstall the factory default software.

You can also reinstall Windows by deleting all partitions on the drive first. This removes the encrypted data, but also the manufacturer’s recovery partition.

If the Windows boot USB cannot see the disk you need to add disk drivers for that machine. Using the recovery partition will have the correct drivers.

What is the machine manufacturer?

cheers, Paul

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Paul Kruse wrote:

My laptop PC crashed in the middle of doing an update.  Now when I power on I get a screen that requests a bitlocker key.  I don’t have one or ever had one.  My thought was to just reinstall Win 11 but, the drive is not visible.  The install works fine but it cannot find the drive to install on.  I tried disabling the TPM module and installing Win 10 but had the same results.   Help!!

Thanks.

 

I never experienced a problem with Bitlocker, but the website listed below may be helpful.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/finding-your-bitlocker-recovery-key-in-windows-6b71ad27-0b89-ea08-f143-056f5ab347d6

 

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If you used a Microsoft account when you created your Windows user account, the Bitlocker key is saved in that account.

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