Laptop inaccessible due to bit locker recovery password and domain issues

Question

Hi All,

I have a computer in our organisation that I cannot access. The PC in question is running Windows 10 Enterprise.

The issue occurred when trying to re-join the computer to the domain, after setting up Azure VPN client.

After this a message stating "The trust relationship between this workstation and the domain failed", when they try to login with their domain credentials, and that it needs to connect to the server to authenticate.

The user is unable to login because the workstation cannot contact the domain controller; it won’t allow login with cached credentials, whether it is online or offline, even though they know their domain password.

The VPN client only connects when the user is logged in, which would resolve the issue providing the connectivity required to communicate with the server and re-sync.

The computer has bit locker installed; the user knows their pin however, we do not have the recovery password. The sync to AD didn't work because the PC was in the wrong OU for the GP to apply to it AND although they were asked to backup their recovery password, they didn't. We've looked everywhere and it can't be found in any connected account, in AD, or indeed at the back of the sofa.

The computer does have some local user accounts however, we don’t know any of the the passwords so can't login locally.

Every method we’ve tried to overcome the issue requires the bit locker recovery password, as stated above, which we don’t have.

Most stuff we have backups of but there are some very important files that need to be recovered that aren't.

I think that’s everything. Any help would be much apricated, just in case I missed something obvious.

All the best,

Stuie_m.