Sudden password/BitLocker activation

@Wojciechowy  Is the "field for a password" actually a field for a BitLocker Recovery Key?  Based on your wording it isn't clear if the "field for a password" is separate from what you encountered with BitLocker.  But the prompt was likely caused by a BIOS update being installed, either pushed through Windows Update or queued for installation by Dell Update/SupportAssist for the same reboot when you installed Windows updates.  If you don't ever remember setting up BitLocker yourself, then it was likely enabled when you chose to link your Windows logon to your Microsoft account, in which case your Recovery Key should be backed up to the cloud in your Microsoft account.  But if your system has BitLocker enabled, you can't just delete the password.  The only way to get your system working again without knowing the BitLocker Recovery Key would be to set up the system from scratch, but that would mean losing your data.

@jphughan 

---

@jphughan wrote:

If you don't ever remember setting up BitLocker yourself, then it was likely enabled when you chose to link your Windows logon to your Microsoft account, in which case your Recovery Key should be backed up to the cloud in your Microsoft account.

---

That would be correct, but when i log into my Microsoft account and i try to obtain BitLocker key, it says there are no BitLocker keys linked into my account.

@Wojciechowy  Ok, unfortunately I’ve seen multiple reports of BitLocker enabling with the key somehow not being in the user’s Microsoft account. I don’t know why, and I think it’s a horrible design if this outcomes is even possible, but that does seem to be the case today.

So in that case the only possible way to recover from this would be to undo the change that caused the TPM to stop releasing the decryption key, which is why you’re seeing this. Basically the TPM only releases the key if it determines that no hardware or firmware changes have been made that might be part of an attempted security breach. Otherwise, you need to enter the Recovery Key to have the TPM trust the new state. So if a BIOS update occurred, flashing back to the previous release (using the BIOS Flash utility available from the F12 boot menu) should undo that since you’d be returning the system to the state that the TPM trust — assuming you know what version you were running before.

But other than that, if you don’t have the Recovery Key, then the data is effectively lost. Hopefully you have a backup of your data, because you’ll need to reinstall Windows and your applications.

I wish I had a better answer here.