Bitlocker problem at tail end of trying to fix 0x80070643 error with windows update

Question

Had a security update (KB5034441) which wouldn't install (0x80070643 error).

Followed the links from Microsoft and did the following:

Have resized my Windows RE partition, per KB5028997: Instructions to manually resize your partition to install the WinRE update - Microsoft Support

Have extracted a new copy of winre.wim from ISO and put it in the new partition, per how to download winre.wim - Microsoft Community

Now I cannot enable Windows RE because of Bitlocker, thus:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /enable

REAGENTC.EXE: Windows RE cannot be enabled on a volume with BitLocker Drive Encryption enabled.

I NOW CANNOT RUN ANY UPDATES!!!

HELP!!! PLEASE!!!!

***moved from Windows / Windows 10 / Windows update, recovery, and backup***

Answer 1

Hi Greg Scully,

in your case, you can try disabling Bitlocker to enable Windows RE. To do this, you can see BitLocker operations guide - Windows Security | Microsoft Learn.

Note that disabling Bitlocker may result in data loss or corruption, so be sure to back up important data.

Kind regards,

Lei

Answer 2

Hi Greg Scully,

in your case, you can try disabling Bitlocker to enable Windows RE. To do this, you can see BitLocker operations guide - Windows Security | Microsoft Learn.

Note that disabling Bitlocker may result in data loss or corruption, so be sure to back up important data.

Kind regards,

Lei

Lei,

This is the kind of *really* bad advice that should not be propagated from a Microsoft Agent.

Really? The advice is - disable BitLocker, but good luck, it might corrupt all of your data???

How about - "Hi, we have escalated this to our Troubleshooting Team and hope to have an update shortly. In the meantime, you can ignore this message."

I mean - this error did appear over 2 months ago and a valid fix should have been released by now. Microsoft should not be asking users to take on risky behavior to fix *their* issue.