BitLocker: need a key but I never installed it

Alan

I am an 30 year IT manager.  I never enabled bitLocker on MY Lattitude 3580

This is an Exec's laptop and she lost everything  Really?????

With Dell tech doing a firmware update remotely to fix a docking station issue the suddenly BitLocker  key is required.

I NEVER INSTALLED BITLOCKER.  DELL HAS A ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!!! They and MS need to work this out and not put it on the customers. IF this is a Dell known issue why did the tech not say something prior to the BIOS update.

Really Dude !!! no excuses don't tell us its a MS issue it only happened on a firmware upgrade on a WIN10 OS with NO BitLocker enables on it!!!!!

this is such an utter fail on Dell's part.  Its easy to shift blame, but its obvious something is messed up somewhere.

I've got a 1 month old xps and like many users here, I DID NOT ENABLE BITLOCKER, Microsoft or Dell needs to take responsibility for this utter failure.  For once the USER is not at fault.  

To the user who lost a million dollars worth of clients file...are you seriously just taking that as a loss.  How far did you push the issue with Dell or Microsoft.  I find it mind boggling that there is no way to recover the Key for issues like this where the user had no choice in enabling bitlocker.  

One of our User's had same problem on a DELL Inspiron 13 5000.  New purchase in Sept Windows 10 Home Pre-loaded at factory.  BitLocker should never have been available to the User.

This system was in use as a standalone unit running nothing but a Local account.  The only Software loaded on it was Office 365 provided by our company.  Three days ago, the User opened the laptop to find the Bitlocker Lockout Screen with a message  directing the users to http//windows.microsoft.com/recoverkeyfaq to get it.

The solution I finally got to work involves having access to the Microsoft Azure account for the Domain that issued the email used on the laptop.

Access the Domain control site.  From there, access the Azure Work-space.  Go to the company AD in Azure.    Locate the User's name for the locked system. Click it to go to the next level to see the User's Devices.

Locate the System showing the Microsoft Name given on the BitLocker Lock Screen. 
Clicking the system name will open a final window that shows you what you need. 

Along with the ID for the Key as stated on the Lock Out page, you will have the 40 digit recovery key. Only part of it will be visible. To capture the whole key, use the "click to copy" icon and save the info from clipboard to a text file.

I wish that somebody had posted all these steps somewhere as it would have saved us a couple of days of downtime and saved me several hours of phone calls and web-searching.

I have seen mention of Azure in other posts but none explaining HOW to find the key there or retrieve it.  I hope this helps someone.

PS:  I should also add that unlocking the system does not do anything to prevent it from happening again.  Once unlocked, the User should navigate to the option in Windows 10 Settings under Device Encryption Choose the "Disable" option.  This will show a progress bar as the system goes through "Un-Encryption" After which, I was not able to find the Option for Device Encryption showing at all which is the same as I see on all my other Windows 10 Home PC's.

You can then open an elevated command prompt and type in the command below to see the Bit-Locker Status of all drives connected to the system.   "manage-bde -status" 

I’ve tried every solution in this thread and I still can’t get past the Bitlocker screen. Any other ideas out there? 

Worked for me. Thank you for posting.

BitLocker Device Encryption

Beginning in Windows 8.1, Windows automatically enables BitLocker Device Encryption on devices that support Modern Standby. With Windows 10, Microsoft offers BitLocker Device Encryption support on a much broader range of devices, including those that are Modern Standby. Microsoft expects that most devices in the future will pass the testing requirements, which makes BitLocker Device Encryption pervasive across modern Windows devices. BitLocker Device Encryption further protects the system by transparently implementing device-wide data encryption.

Unlike a standard BitLocker implementation, BitLocker Device Encryption is enabled automatically so that the device is always protected. The following list outlines how this happens:

More details down below

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/information-protection/bitlocker/bitlocker-device-encryption-overview-windows-10

Same problem here. First the computer crashes due to a hardware issue and they refuse to compensate me for the loss of memory. My computer’s memory also could not be recovered because the BitLocker key was setup even though I’ve never logged in to my XPS with an email address. Two weeks after servicing, the laptop repeatedly crashes again. The DELL hotline is completely useless as Technicians blame windows updates. 

Dell is selling lemons here - do not trust the rave reviews online by “professional” websites. The user experience has been horrible on this laptop.

FYI this laptop is less than a year old. I estimate my losses to be in the range of 100k if my memory cannot be recovered. 

I am having the same issue: Only I reboot so many times that at some point it loads normally. But when it happens (6 or 7 times so far) it gets really on my nerves. I am thinking of contacting the point of sale, maybe they can do something.

This is exactly what happened to me today. I was able to get the key from one drive but I'm unable restore/recovery my drive due to not having a restore point or previous version. I'd love to be apart of a class action suit. This is totally unacceptable. I doesn't matter that I had most of my docs backed up or hard copies thereof, this should not happen. I've had problems with this new laptop ever since I received it. That should have been a red flag to me.

Thanks DellsIHave, your solution should work for most people.

Details of how to use "Microsoft Azure" to get the BitLocker Key is shown on this video (which helped me to):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6J3P8CAIPY

After a Microsoft Windows update the Bitlocker blue screen appear.

We have NOT activated Bitlocker

We have no info into ANY of our Microsoft Account.

We have no info into our Active Directory 

We have no info into our USB, HD, etc. to recover the key

THIS IS REALLY UNACCEPTABLE!!!!

We have to format our hard disk and reinstall from scratch.

I think is enough to ask a refund from Dell.

I experienced the same thing just now. I followed the steps on doing the boot to the os by tapping f2 and all but after doing that, support assist os recovery came up and suggested to restore my pc because there are some issues need to be fixed. I didn't have a choice. I just reformat my pc. I'm doing my thesis when that bitlocker recovery came up. Now all my sleepless nights are worthless and I wasted my time for that stupid thing, when I should've studying by now for my exams. Now I'm gonna go back from scratch.