Drives locked and donot have key

Question

My previous window was installed in secure boot version. On Installation of new window my all drives excluding drive c has been locked. And no key found in microsoft account. I cannnot format drives as i cannot afford that data loss i have in drives..Give me solution

Answer 1

Can you explain a bit more about the previous system they were used on.

Was it Windows 10 or 11 Pro edition.

Did you connect to a school, university or business.

Did you select to encrypt the drives. (are they all internal drives)

Without the correct recovery key to unlock the drives you will not be able to access them. The encryption is too strong to crack the encryption, there is no workaround. I if you want to use the drives again then a full format deleting all data is the only option.

Answer 2

Hello, thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A.

Could you please confirm whether you have checked all of the Microsoft accounts you used to sign in on this device to see if the BitLocker recovery key for the drives is stored in any of them?

https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey

Also, if you have added a Work or School account on the device, the recovery key might be stored in your organization’s account. You will need to contact your organization’s IT support to access the key.

If you cannot locate the BitLocker recovery key and all of your drives are locked, formatting the drive will be the only option. If the drive is already unlocked, you can simply turn off BitLocker encryption.

Answer 3

Those locked vols are still tied to the old BitLocker setup… and without the recovery key nothing’s going to decrypt. A fresh install doesn’t change that at all. I might be wrong here, but the safest thing you can do right now is keep them strictly read‑only — no mounts, no repair attempts, no writes.

If you haven’t already, it’s worth checking every Microsoft account you’ve ever signed into on that device, since sometimes the recovery key gets backed up there. But if the key doesn’t turn up anywhere, there’s unfortunately no way to unlock the drives without it I think.