My Surface Pro 11 has BitLocked me out!

Question

When setting up my new Surface Pro last year, I upgraded to Windows 11 Pro. I haven't joined it to my corporate network, but did sign in with my corporate account. I am the admin for the corporate network so have access to everything.

For some reason, (after changing some system settings, to overcome the Surface Pro's unwillingness to allow my VPN software to be installed correctly,) it's decided to invoke a BitLocker lockdown. This would be bad enough even if I actually had a BitLocker Key, but I don't, because it was never set up. But to make matters work, I think it knows it was never set up, so has decided not to do anything.

At boot I get the message "There are no more BitLocker recovery options on your PC" with the instruction to "Press the Windows key for UEFI Firmware Settings", which might as well say "Tap it with your magic wand", 'coz I don't have one of those either.

I have downloaded a Surface Recovery Image, but in the instructions, it looks like I still need the BitLocker key.

I have no issue with losing everything that's on there. It's all backed up in various places, but I would like to be able to use it. And before I go out and buy a USB big enough to fit the Recovery Image, (12GB! Is that really necessary?) I'd like to know that option will work.

*** Moved from Surface / Surface Pro / Surface Pro (11th Edition) / Install and update ***

Answer 1

Hello,

In my experience, the computer may automatically encrypt itself after some system changes or hardware replacement.

The only solution in this case is to reinstall the system or you can try to enter safe mode to restore the point in time.

Have a nice day.

Best Regards,

Hania

Answer 2

Thanks to the general lack of support, I ended up having to rebuild my Surface Pro from scratch. Previously I had upgraded it to Windows 11 Pro, but I can't find my licence key anywhere, so that's not happening yet. And I'm really not planning to do anything serious until I have made sure this can't happen again.
According to others, Windows 11 Home does not support BitLocker, yet when I check in the Privacy & security settings, there it is, turned on. I've turned it off for now, and I'm not turning it back on again until I've found out how to get the BitLocker key. And here we find another problem.
Microsoft's support page tells me I can find it:

• Attached to your Microsoft account
• Attached to your work or school account
• On a printout
• On a USB flash drive

It's not in the first two, and as I haven't printed it out, or added it to USB drive, I'm not even going to go there.
I know this must be difficult for Microsoft, this being their own hardware AND operating system, but you'd think something as serious as this would warrant a bit more effort.

PS I'm going to post this back on the Surface Pro board, where I first put, because it seems to be very much a Surface Pro issue, and I'd appreciate it if nobody moved it.