Help to Decrypt the "D" Drive without recovery Key

Question

Team,

I am writing to you to check to get a possible resolution on an existing case with Microsoft O365 & Windows Tech Team. I am not getting a possible solution. Hence, I am writing here to check if anyone in the broader arena can help me to come out from this difficult situation.

Let me summarize the issue here:

My system no boot issue started on 16th of Aug’2020 when an Office 365 Tech Team member trying to help me with the upgradation of E1 to E3 and in the process he deleted some registry files.
System got irresponsive and on force restart, the system showing an error Stop Code: Critical Process Died.
Please note that Office 365 Tech Team member not taken the back up of my registry before did the Registry Edits. This major software changes triggers the bit locker
Further many trouble shoots were tried by various Office 365 Tech Team members.
With the help of Office 365 Tech Team member, we talk to Windows Tech Team and they suggested to perform the BIOS downgrade to solve this issue.
I contacted Dell and perform BIOS downgrade (downgraded BIOS to 2.6.1.) on 23rd August 2020. Still system shows the error Stop Code: Critical Process Died.
Further, connected in conference with Office 365 Tech Team, Windows Tech Team and Dell Tech Team. No solution to bring back to the boot situation. Finally decided to re-install the Operating System.
Reinstallation was successful deleting my complete data in the C Drive.
When trying to access the "D" drive, it's showing encrypted.
When clicking the “D” Drive, its asking for Recovery Key. We don’t have the key.

Screen showing “No Bit Locker Key” found under the Device Management of Microsoft. To recover the bitlocker key, tried with basic CMDs on bitlocker which is not supporting & proceeded with Intune MDM to recover the key. So went ahead & created, assigned the trial EMS license. Implemented Intune to O365 tenant and enrolled the laptop for Intune. Enrolment is successful but no key recovered from device management since the response found as "No Bitlocker Recovery Key Found for this Device".

Now anyone has a solution for me? Can anyhow help me to access my "D" Drive?

I am ready to pay for this service as well as the data is very precious for us. So please help me to get connect to the right resource who can help me to come out from this difficult situation. I contacted Microsoft to get a solution and made my life easy, and I am ending up in this deep trouble. Awaiting to get a positive response from this forum.

Thanks & Regards,

Dipil

<PII REMOVED>

Answer 1

Hello Dipil,

If you could decrypt the drive easily without the key, the system would not be secure. My suggestion is to find out who originally encrypted the drive, perhaps the key is in their MS account, maybe they wrote it down, printed it, stored it on a USB drive, in Azure or AD account.

Sorry, I wish I had a better answer.

Miguel Fra
www.falconitservices.com

Answer 2

The drive d: was set to auto-unlock whenever the system starts. It read the key from the (encrypted) c: drive after c: was unlocked by the TPM.
Now c: is formatted and the key is gone.
You have 2 possible ways out:

1 you have an image backup of c: (I guess you don't)
2 you find the recovery key either online in the cloud account storage or printed out

2 assumes that the drive was encrypted with an account that you have access to.

Answer 3

Thank you very much for response.

The key is not stored in the Microsoft Account which I used to set-up and run the laptop. This is what it shows in the Microsoft Account:

"BitLocker recovery keys
You don't have any BitLocker recovery keys uploaded to your Microsoft account.

Note: If someone else helped you set up your PC, the BitLocker keys you're looking for might be on their account."

In my case, no one help to set-up the PC. I buy the PC from Dell Exclusive store and from Day - 1, I only use and set up the Laptop. Also the email id the same.

In the same email id - the Recovery Key for my second laptop showing. But not this laptop. What could be the possible reason for the recovery key not showing for the first laptop. I am not sure.

Further we set-up the system in the device management of Microsoft and there also the key is not showing. See the enclosed screen shot.

Also I don't have the image of C.

Answer 4

Hi Dipil,

We noticed that you did not perform any Bitlocker encryption action, but Bitlocker encrypted on D drive, right? We found other article refer to the same behavior. Such as: Windows 10: Bitlocker encrypts automatically. In this article, it refer to an automatically encryption Behavior by Dell Device if your hardware meets encryption requirement and use Microsoft account. It not only limited to login system with Microsoft account, it will also contains add MSA as email, app and work/school account, log into the Microsoft Store app with MSA, redeem/activate Microsoft Office or other Microsoft applications with MSA.

As you said you can't find any Bitlocker information on system logon MSA, please also check other related MSA if you have sign in with the upper scenarios.

By the way, is it a domain joined computer?

Please note: Information posted in the given link is hosted by a third party. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy and effectiveness of information.

Bests,

============================================

If the Answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 5

There is no way to create a new recovery key since it is done at your end, inside windows. Microsoft cannot create a 2nd key that matches, no.
Once I saw someone who insisted he hadn't encrypted and he had no MIcrosoft account at all only later to admit that he had an azure account.
Do you have an azure AD account by any chance?