Installed bitlocker, now I can't boot into windows/boot from usb.

[Skylar1146]

Hello, I recently purchased a laptop(Lenovo x1 carbon) and decided what the heck i'll turn on bitlocker. Everything ran fine, it did it's restart process and booted back into windows. All was good.

Then I turned the laptop back on later, and cannot boot into windows. It acts as if there is no OS installed. After the lenovo splash, it brings up the bios screen to select what drive to boot from. Selecting the drive does nothing.

I then tried booting from a fresh windows 10 pro usb, to try and run startup repair or if that didn't work, repair the MBR and run the usual disk checks. But if I boot from the USB, it blue screens saying NTFS FILE_SYSTEM.

Anyone know how to get around this? Been google searching for an hour to no avail.

It is running the latest (creators) update for windows 10 pro. I have the bitlocker key saved on my NAS but I can't get into the laptop to turn bitlocker off. Thanks, I appreciate your help greatly

 

[drtweak]

1) Does your laptop have a TPM Module in it? If so something definatly went wrong
2) If not, then you need to have a USB Boot key. This USB drive allows you to boot and decrypt the volume.
3) Also with an encrypted volume 1) You can NOT run a Repair of the MBR as it can not detect windows since it is encrypted or read the hard drive 2) You can't even reinstall windows without cleaning the encrypted drive with special software using the PSID on the drive itself.

Honestly right now your best bet is to get you recovery key off your NAS, plug that hard drive into another working PC, it will ask for a bitlocker recovery key, toss in your key and let it decrypt the volume. Then toss it back in, see if it boots, if not then run a fixboot to fix the booting.

 

[Skylar1146]

1) Does your laptop have a TPM Module in it? If so something definatly went wrong
2) If not, then you need to have a USB Boot key. This USB drive allows you to boot and decrypt the volume.
3) Also with an encrypted volume 1) You can NOT run a Repair of the MBR as it can not detect windows since it is encrypted or read the hard drive 2) You can't even reinstall windows without cleaning the encrypted drive with special software using the PSID on the drive itself.

Honestly right now your best bet is to get you recovery key off your NAS, plug that hard drive into another working PC, it will ask for a bitlocker recovery key, toss in your key and let it decrypt the volume. Then toss it back in, see if it boots, if not then run a fixboot to fix the booting.

1) Yes it does have a TPM module, TPM 1.2 compliant according to the spec sheet if that helps.
2) I tried booting into a usb on the laptop with the afflicted drive, I can get into the windows command prompt finally, but tried unlocking with the recovery key directly and the path to the key via a USB but it does not recognize either as parameters.

Is there a way to unlock it straight off the laptop via command prompt? Even if I have to completely wipe the drive that will be okay, as at least I can use it. I do not currently have a m.2 to usb or anything to connect it to my desktop so working on the laptop itself would be best

 

[drtweak]

Boot off a windows install disk. One you get to the screen where it ask for which hard drive to install to hit Shift+F10 to open up the command line then type each line while hitting enter after each line. X refers to the disk number that your disk is.

Diskpart
list disk
select disk X
Clean

See if that will then free up the drive.

 

[Skylar1146]

Boot off a windows install disk. One you get to the screen where it ask for which hard drive to install to hit Shift+F10 to open up the command line then type each line while hitting enter after each line. X refers to the disk number that your disk is.

Diskpart
list disk
select disk X
Clean

See if that will then free up the drive.

Hey there, kind of stupid of me but I realized the disk ive been seeing in diskpart is the usb I was booting windows with, so I can't even see the drive in there. I took my 2.5" ssd out of my desktop and plugged it into the laptop via sata to usb seeing if I could read the drive via diskpart, disk management or on windows itself there but I had no luck. I ordered a m.2 to sata connector to try it on my desktop itself in a few days, but I doubt that will do much.

Any ideas on how to even be able to see it? Thanks much for your help so far, I really appreciate it.

-Skylar

Edit: I should note my desktop has windows 10 home so I have no access to bitlocker on there either.

 

[drtweak]

With windows 10 Home you can't Encrypt a drive, but you can still see/decrypt them though.

When you go into disk management or the BIOS do you see the drive there?

 

[Skylar1146]

With windows 10 Home you can't Encrypt a drive, but you can still see/decrypt them though.

When you go into disk management or the BIOS do you see the drive there?

No I cannot see it in either of those or anywhere else for that matter.

 

[drtweak]

Odd. You should be able to plug in a bitlocker drive into any version of windows with Vista/Server 2008 and up and it should just ask to decrypt it. In your case it would ask for the Recovery Key.

Odd how it didn't pick it up. There could be an issue with the SSD itself as well.

Try the USB adapter and plug it in. If it finds it try the clean command in Disk Part. If that doesn't work let me know. I know there is some other software that I have that is designed for other encryption software but should work for bitlocker drivers as well.

 

[Skylar1146]

Odd. You should be able to plug in a bitlocker drive into any version of windows with Vista/Server 2008 and up and it should just ask to decrypt it. In your case it would ask for the Recovery Key.

Odd how it didn't pick it up. There could be an issue with the SSD itself as well.

Try the USB adapter and plug it in. If it finds it try the clean command in Disk Part. If that doesn't work let me know. I know there is some other software that I have that is designed for other encryption software but should work for bitlocker drivers as well.

Tried the adapter again, still no luck 🙁. Unless bitlocker somehow fried the drive I don't know what could have happened. What is the software you mentioned?

 

[drtweak]

what brand is the SSD?

 

[Skylar1146]

what brand is the SSD?

It's a toshiba
Here's A picture

 

[drtweak]

Look on the other side of it. Is there a very long PSID number?

 

[drtweak]

Try a few things there. I can't get to the software i use as 1) the link i have no longer works and 2) I don't have my own personal web space for storing files back up so I can't give ya link but try one of these two here. Also make sure the SSD is the ONLY thing plugged in!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udxNL6sCuDQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGeooYkCl-U

One of those should wipe it back to a use able state.

 

[James Mason]

Your probably turned the laptop off while it was encrypting the drive, and thus ruined the encryption and the drive.

 

[Skylar1146]

For anyone looking in the future, I tried everything and nothing worked so I got a new ssd and popped it in and in worked just fine. I guess the drive was dead. Best of luck to you all!