Bitlocker recovery key not working

Question

My computer started blue screening for about a week. Sometimes when it restarted, it would boot into lenovo as if it didnt see the OS. It would usually come back if i left it alone. However, recently it blue screened and opened with bitlocker. I got my recovery key from microsoft website and the key ID appears to match but it’s failing. Why could this be happening?

Answer 1

Hi there,

I’m Cherrelyn, and I’m here to help.

Thank you for sharing the screenshots. I can see that the recovery key you entered matches the Key ID format, but still fails to unlock the drive. This usually means the recovery key doesn’t match the specific encryption instance of the drive anymore possibly due to hardware changes or system instability (like the blue screens you mentioned) corrupting the TPM key. Drive label or encryption state changing during a crash or update. The key you’re using may belong to a different encryption session on the same device. If you have other Microsoft accounts or saved keys from different times, please check if there are additional BitLocker recovery keys saved in your Microsoft account. Try them one by one. Also, if possible, check the BIOS settings and ensure TPM and Secure Boot are enabled and unchanged. If none of the keys work and your drive still won’t unlock, you may need to contact Microsoft Support directly for deeper account/device verification or consider professional data recovery if the drive has critical files.

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions, feel free to reply to this post.

Warm regards,

Cherrelyn