Hello Usually the recovery key or the password is the key to access the bitlocker drive. Do you login with a Microsoft Account? If you login with Microsoft Account, we may try to check the recovery key from the following link. https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey Finding your BitLocker recovery key in Windows - Microsoft Support If both of them are not available, I am afraid the data may no longer be available. Since the issue occurred after Dell SafeBIOS, we may try to ask for help from the Dell support. If present bitlocker process is related to the SafeBIOS. If it is, where is the recovery key.
windows falsely shows drive as bitlocked (no password or key). bdmanage-bde -status returns unknown and error.
Sorry for the long description. I couldn't find a more concise way to describe it New Dell PC with Windows 11 Pro. I moved one data HDD from my old Dell (Windows 10 Pro) into my new PC (to copy some of the data on the local data drives). During the data copy process (from the data HDD to an empty new local drive), the HDD became suddenly unavailable (copy process stopped and HDD disappeared from File Manager). After reboot it came back with an yellow warning (a lock and !🔒 ⚠) but no explanation or suggestion on what needed to be done. This happened 2-3 times until eventually it became permanently unavailable with a big yellow lock on it and reported as
D: locked by Bitlocker
When trying to open it, it does not ask for a passkey or something. It just says
"Bitlocker (D:) The Bitlocker version on this drive is not compatible with your version of Windows. Try opening the drive using a newer version of Windows"
- OS is last version Windows 11 and up to date.
- I also tried on Windows 10 and another Windows 11 machine - also up to date, and it says the same as above.
- When attached to a Linux machine it just says it is locked, unknown locking mechanism) At Windows CLI:
"manage-bde -status D:" returns
size: unknown
Bitlocker version: unknown
Conversion Status: unknown
Percentage encrypted: unknown%
Error: an error occurred (code 080070057)
The only other thing that happened is that shortly after I installed the old data HDD in the new machine, Dell suggested a mandatory update which included a BIOS upgrade. The upgrade did not go smoothly: it stopped at some point (hanged, I had to reboot). After reboot, the BIOS came up with an announcement "protected by Dell SafeBios". All the warnings happened shortly after that. Please also note that:
- shortly after all this, the 🔒 ⚠ started to show also on the other 2 internal data drives, never on the System Disk. In order to avoid similar surprises, I tried firstly to BitLock and then Unlock said drives and the warnings disappeared never to come back)
- I tried going back to previous BIOS and then upgrade back which both seemed to work fine (no warnings and "DELL SafeBios announcement went off and then on again) but the D: HDD remained Locked and inaccessible
So it seems like something (probably related to DELL SafeBios) initiated some process (pointed at the drives that were added to the initial configuration?) which never finished ans eventually rendered the D: drive unavailable. Any idea what happened and what I can do?
Please help me retrieve my data. Not all of it is backed up and I was only trying to make a copy of it...
Thank you in advance,
Stavros