Device Encryption problem in Windows 10

Question

I’ve had my laptop with Windows 10 Home for about 5 years, but only discovered a few days ago that device encryption is enabled, i.e. when I go to the device encryption tab in in Update and Security, it says that device encryption is enabled. But it also says: “You need a Microsoft Account to finish encrypting this device. Sign in with a Microsoft account instead.” The problem is that I am already signed in  with a Microsoft account. I have tried signing out and signing back in, but it makes no difference: it still says I need a Microsoft account to finish encrypting this device.

As well, there is no bitlocker recovery code either on line in my Microsoft account or on the computer. When I type “manage-bde -protectors -get c:” in administrator PowerShell, it says “ERROR: No key protectors found.” The only thing I can think of trying is disabling device encryption, and then enabling it again. Is this a bad idea and do you have any other suggestions? The computer works and has been working for 5 years. Maybe I should just leave it as is. But I would prefer to have it encrypted.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Thanks for the feedback and advice. If there's a risk of screwing up the computer, I'm going to consider it further before I decide what to do. At the moment, I don't want to have to reinstall the operating system. My wife uses the computer daily and would not want to be without it while I mess around with it.

Answer 2

Hi,

disabling and then reenabling is a god idea. It will take some time though, so plan for a couple hours of slow PC, as it may hog down the performance a bit while doing it.

Though, make a backup of your files now, before you mess up. Copy them to an external media such as a USB HDD/SSD, or a thumb drive (though, make sure the backup is successful, especially when using USB Disks formatted in FAT, they have a tendency to break easily.)

You should have backups of your files on multiple drives anyway.

Sincerely,

LightJack