Bitlocker kicked in and I'm F****d

bettand

I have a Micro Center extented warranty on my Dell Inspiron 1300. Bitlocker kicked in and now I'm frozen out. I can't find my recover key in my microsoft account and I threw away all the packaging and manuals for this laptop so I'm royally screwed. I can't do any kind of reset either...it keeps asking for this phantom recovery key. At this point I'll say bye bye to my data. But I need help doing a restart. The laptop has no disc drive and I have no USB stick with windows on it. What do I do here? Please help. 

hughjazz44

Well, if Bitlocker could be bypassed in any form without the required key, it wouldn't be a good data security solution.
I'm pretty sure you're just screwed.  Hopefully you've learned from this experience, though.

TS_JosephF

I have seen this happen a few times. Honestly, I am sorry to hear this happened to you. The only way you may be able to unlock the encrypted drive is by going to this site: http://aka.ms/recoverykey  and signing in to your account. I know you said that you could not find the recovery key in your Microsoft Account, are you signed into that account on the Dell Inspiron? If Bitlocker is active on any drives that are tied to that Microsoft Account, it will display the recovery keys to each encrypted drive once you sign in. I hope you are able to unlock the drive using this method.

bettand

hughjazz44...I sure did. I never even heard of bitlocker before and if you read other threads, this has gotten many customers messed up. And now, I can't even get into my laptop and reset it. Thanks, Microsoft. I have no recovery key saved. There has to be something that I can do here. Micro Center, I bought the support plan from you for this laptop. What are my other options? Can you at least do a factory reset for me?

bettand

TS_JosephF I see now that you're an admin. Do you know my options here with my support plan I purchased?

AlexS

bettand said:

TS_JosephF I see now that you're an admin. Do you know my options here with my support plan I purchased?

Can you please direct message me the reference number for your purchase so I can look into what options are available for you? 

bettand

TS_JosephF
I've been DMing you bro

TS_JosephF

bettand said:

TS_JosephF
I've been DMing you bro

My apologies. I just replied to your messages. 

mindy

The same thing happened to me.  Is the bitrecovery key in our paperwork?

TS_JosephF

Hello @mindy
Unfortunately, it is not in any paperwork. The key is not generated until the drive is encrypted. Were you signed in with your Microsoft account on the PC? If you were, then click on this link and sign in http://aka.ms/recoverykey - It will display your BitLocker recovery key. That would be the only way to unlock your PC and recover your data. If not, you would have to reinstall Windows and that would erase all of your data.

swagryryswag

I am having this same issue! My laptop shows a blue screen that says "Enter bitlocker recovery key". I never created a Bitlocker recovery key and there is not one associated with my Microsoft account. I checked my Microsoft account (I checked via http://aka.ms/recoverykey ).

Is it possible Microcenter installed Bitlocker at the time of purchase without my knowledge? Or is it possble Microcenter sold me a computer with Bitlocker installed without their knowledge?

TSPhillipT

Hello @swagryryswag
You should be receiving an email from me regarding this Bitlocker issue.