Question Who would have the key to a bitlocker encrypted drive if the user never added it themselves?

Tennis987

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Sep 9, 2015
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A friend has a laptop. According to him, it did a weird bios update automatically and now it wants the BitLocker recovery key. He never set up bitlocker, to begin with. What would be his options?
Contact the laptop manufacturer? Reinstall windows?
 

Cj-tech

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Jan 27, 2021
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A friend has a laptop. According to him, it did a weird bios update automatically and now it wants the BitLocker recovery key. He never set up bitlocker, to begin with. What would be his options?
Contact the laptop manufacturer? Reinstall windows?
Was he signed into a company or school account? If so, they may have encryption setup in Azure. If this is the case, they have the recovery key. If that’s not the case, he has to wipe the PC using a bootable Windows 10 installation media.
 
Bitlocker is typically automatically enabled from laptop manufacturers if the laptop supports it. According to Microsoft, these are the only places you might find the key:
  • Your Microsoft account, if you registered the laptop with it
  • A printout
  • A USB drive (apparently you can plug one into the locked computer and get a text file you can read on another)
  • The organization (school/work) account
  • The administrator of the system
 
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