I don’t need a solution but this may help others.
My son phoned yesterday. “Help my computer won’t boot” (critical for his business). Diagnosis over the phone is painful but eventually I arrived at the diagnosis that bitlocker was causing issues – the laptop asked for his bitlocker key. Using his phone, he accessed his MS account. “There is no key there”. Presumably, that means he set up Windows 11 Home as a local account and his drive was partially encrypted. We tried some UEFI changes. They didn’t help. We were unable to access any Windows tools that may have helped via safe mode (e.g. he said SFC /scannow was running but did not seem to give a result or have access to replace files). By the time I found a link with instructions that may have worked around bitlocker, he had commenced factory reset.
This morning I went searching for a cause. This month’s KB5012170 (update for secure boot) is my choice of suspect.
My son’s laptop? His data are all in the cloud. He ordered another laptop last night so he has a backup if one falls over. This time Win Pro so we can configure notify updates.
Coincidentally, I had a similar (but not identical) experience running Windows 10 earlier this year – unable to boot to Windows. My data are all in the cloud. The laptop is now about 3 years old. Data are in the cloud and I figure an occasional full reset is a good so did not bother looking for a cure. It was also an opportunity to upgrade to Win 11.
Further oddity: Nobody else every configures a computer for me and I always use local account set up. When I checked my MS account there is a stray bitlocker key from 2017 with a device name I do not recognise and would never create. It is now deleted (but copied to a Word doc in the cloud first). Anyone wanting to check, use this link. It will ask you log into your MS account.
Group A (but Telemetry disabled Tasks and Registry)
Win 7 64 Pro desktop
Win 10 64 Home portable
