BItlocker Key Help!

Question

We recently had an employee leave our company and in an attempt to wipe their HP laptop to give to the new employee we required a bitlocker key. The bitlocker key was not in the employee's microsoft account. We had a company ownership change and domain change. I believe the bitlocker key is in the old account since that is the account that had initally been setup on this device. I attempted too many times to wipe without the key and the device is now locked and I cannot get back to windows without the Bitlocker key.

Answer 1

If the drive is encrypted and the associated account cannot be accessed, then you will need to re-install Windows, a Windows reset will not work on an encrypted drive, you would need to create a bootable Windows 11 USB on an empty 8GB USB flash drive, then boot the PC form that to clean install Windows 11, and at the start of the installation process, delete all partitions on the drive to remove the encryption, which will result in loss of all data on the drive.