Good day Paula Bind
If you already have the recovery key but it’s not working, the most common reason is that the system is asking for the specific key tied to the drive’s current encryption state, not just any BitLocker key you might have saved earlier. Each drive can have multiple recovery keys if it’s been re-encrypted or hardware changes occurred, so double‑check in your Microsoft account (https://account.microsoft.com/devices) or with your organization’s Azure AD portal to confirm the right one.
Restarting won’t bypass BitLocker it’s designed to protect the data until the correct key is entered. If the key you’re entering doesn’t match, the system will keep blocking access. Sometimes BIOS updates or disk changes can trigger BitLocker to request a new key, so make sure you’re pulling the latest recovery key associated with that exact device ID. If you’re certain you have the right key and it still fails, it could mean the drive is corrupted or the key file is mismatched, in which case you may need to boot from recovery media and run a repair.
The safest path is to verify the recovery key from your Microsoft account or your IT admin portal, and then use that exact one.
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