BitLocker: need a key but I never installed it

newer Dells do not ship with a TPM 1.2 chip any longer, but will use INTEL PTT (Platform Trust Technology).  PTT should be turned off in bios.

Here's a Question. What if you bought a computer from Dell and you never created a Microsoft account? We always create offline only accounts and have ran into this issue a few times with Dell computers. If the device was only setup with an offline account - There is no Azure or Microsoft account to store said "Keys". 

YAP - (Yet another post). I had the same problem today on my Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Series:. I figured out what caused it: I had moved the boot order in the BIOS to boot from CD/DVD at the top.

Here's what worked for me:

1) Create bootable Dell recovery USB stick using Dell Windows 10 recovery media for your Dell computer (assuming you have Win 10) Go to the link below and follow the instructions. You’re not actually going to use it for recovery, but if you don’t have a second bootable device this doesn’t work. If you do have a CD/DVD drive or a second hard drive, you can skip this step.

 https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln297924/create-windows-10-recovery-media-for-your-dell-computer?lang=en

2) Make sure the laptop is off

3) Plug the USB stick into a USB port (obviously).

4) Press the F12 key first, then the power key. Now keep rapidly tappig the F12 key -  You have to do this from a cold boot, not a warm boot from restart. Shut down the computer and try again if you get the windows setup screen.

5) It should boot into the black & white system setup Screen

6) Use the down arrow to select BIOS SETUP under OTHER OPTIONS which takes you to the BIOS setup screen

7) Under General click Advanced Settings. This takes you to another setup screen

8) Click the Restore Settings button at the bottom right of the screen. This should pop up a window with 3 choices

9) Select the Factory Settings button and Click Apply

10) Another dialog pops up to verify you want to keep the changes. Click yes .

11) Now Click Exit

12) Shut the computer down then,

13) Do the same press F12 first then power on and keep tapping the F12 key

14) Now under UEFI BOOT select Windows Boot Manager

15) This should take you back to your home screen and you can log in.

16) You may have to repeat steps 2-14 every time you boot up, but it sure beats wiping out your precious files and apps.

You can now safely remove the USB stick.

Hope this helps!

It's 2019, anyone relying on their laptop as the only place to save data is bound to lose it.  You should be backing up, or storing someplace else entirely.  You don't blame Ford because the sandwich you left in the back seat got moldy? 

Bitlocker is a Windows product, Dell cannot help you and did not cause the issue.  Re-install Windows, and keep your sandwiches in the refrigerator!

Consider yourself lucky, Mine did say something about a key, but at that time, I would have never known anything about it, or what it meant.  I never could get mine to boot to functional situation, so I used another computer to download a fix and or reset software from dell, and rebooted with it, although my goal was never to reload windows, that is the only advice I ever got and only option that was ever available, I never knew about bitlocker or any stupid key, until a local tech found it on my microsoft website, unfortunately it did not work anyway at that point, I then sent to 2 different pro recovery companies, they all said the bitlocker meta data was corrupted somehow, I lost a years worth of unbacked up files and jobs, a lot of which were ongoing projects.  Sure they should have been backed up and i actually thought they were, I have found a few of them along the way in emails and various other places, so not total loss, but none the less, an unecessary loss, It me off that a software that is supposed to help secure your files turns out to be something that destroys them, even though my pc was not supposed to have had it on there, found it through research that bitlocker self loads seamlessly on some pc's that meet certain criteria, unknowing to the user.  Boy isnt that a good thing, then it goes on to tell you how important it is for you to save your key in safe place, which how the heck can you do that if you do not know it exists in first place.  There is a reason that bitlocker does not jive with home version of 10, just wish the ones that created it would have told that to the ones who think its cool to load it on various pc's without consent, but seems the do a lot of things without consent, seem the owner is the one that is supposed to get consent to use their own pc,  

Bitlocker is apparently a tool to help you self destruct your system, not even our nsa group of gurus and spys could get into my harddrive.  

or maybe it did what it was supposed to do, kept people from stealing my work, gee thanks, next time ask before ruining my life

the drive is still perfectly healthy and works like a champ, but my data is no where to be found, i never did anythig to delete it overwrite it nothing at all, it is the first drive over my nearly 30 years of computing that I am not able to retrieve all my file not even 1 other than a bunch of junk files that basically equal the size of my drive when it went to

goober5595

I feel the same. In all the years I've been using computers (almost 30 years) this is the first time I couldn't deal with this on my own. I've built a desktop from scratch and customized a bunch. I've done complete system restores. But today, the computers don't even come with disks or anything for restoration. These were my options:

• Buy a reinstallation disk from ASUS for $50, wait for it in the mail, and do the clean install myself.
• Send the computer back to ASUS for $60 and be without it for maybe 10 days.
• Pay Best Buy's Geek Squad $100 for the clean install and have the computer back in 2 days.

After a week of going around in circles I got fed up and went the Best Buy route. And I'm angry about it. I'm not upset about the data as much at this loss of control. I don't know what caused the problem. I never heard of Bitlocker before this problem; Microsoft and ASUS kept pointing me to each other; and when I get the computer back I face several weeks of reinstalling software and configuring things.

Hi,

I resetting BIOS to factory settings on a Latitude E5570 but had no luck, it boots back to the Bitlocker prompt. Did you have Secure Boot enabled or a recovery drive in? something else?

yessir, you are exactly correct, one blaming the other, my harddrive was a standard 2 gb disk style drive, with an optional internal ssd drive, which was not installed at that time, bitlocker is not supported by windows 10 home version, which is what i have now, since that time, i have installed a ssd drive and still have my original drive in my computer untouched since the problem i had on jan 7, 2019, i have since checked my bitlocker situation recently with current drive setup and guess what the drives are now encrypted with bitlocker again, without my knowledge or consent, which makes the recovery key that is so important an instant joke for those who know nothing about bitlocker.  unfortunately over the years, i have become a bit skeptical about the intent of all of these updates that are forced down our throats, now encrypting our drives without our knowledge, in my opinion there is some reason this is happening and i can only imagine it is not because bitlocker or its makers give a   about the owner of the computer.  my guess is that it is a feel good thing that is intended to make people feel their pcs are free from intrusion, when in reality this prolly allows easy access for those that think they deserve it, maybe that is a bit of a conspiracy theory, but based on the last several years of corruption, anything is possible, especially since most or all of the pc makers and cell phone co. where being paid off by the government, most likely nothing has changed just getting wiser about their deliveries. hich for those of us with nothing to hide but our disgust for such , makes this a bit troubling, either way, i dont see how someone making my pc so called encrypted benefits me in any way whatso ever, when all a person has to do is open my laptop up press power button and they can see or take whatever they want without any problems, makes one wonder what the intent of bitlocker is other than self destruction software or what i said above.  oh wait, if i want to reflash bios most likely it will self implode the computer, then some tech know nuthing on other end says all u got to do is reload windows.  do fresh redo,  wow, maybe this is a possible inducement to make sure all of us drones put everything online to avoid data loss, that should make things much more secure

I totally agree with you, backup is very important, I use very unusual software that requires quite a bit of beyond the norm firmware, so beyond the file loss, that was another time consuming hit, normally when I update laptops, I carry the other with me for a good while, until I get everything back to normal

I suppose they believe most simply use it for surfing web or watching movies, I expect it won't be long until the computer is just an online account that is access via voice and seen through your eye glasses.  Which will not work for what I use it for

"It's 2019, anyone relying on their laptop as the only place to save data is bound to lose it. You should be backing up, or storing someplace else entirely. You don't blame Ford because the sandwich you left in the back seat got moldy"

Sorry, but even with backed up data, which I have, it's a very time-consuming effort to re-install windows, restore all the data that was on my machine, re-install all of the applications, and re-configure every single setting that I've changed over 2 years because of this problem.

You seem to be saying you see no problem with a Dell computer just locking all your data and forcing you to start from scratch - you think that's a fine, standard business practice?  To use your analogy - if my Ford key fob suddenly stopped working because Ford just randomly scrambled the codes, and I needed to get a tow/ride to the dealer and a new key, you think that's fine?

Here are the details behind one of the issues that cause this problem.  Even if you have a Win 10 Home machine, Active Directory will automatically install and activate Bitlocker without you knowing it.  The only way to get the key is to contact your system administrators, as it's stored in AD.

This scenario has nothing to do with Dell - it's a Microsoft "feature" and a policy of your system administrators if they don't tell you this was done.

Automatic Bitlocker on Windows 10 during Azure AD Join

Apparently, when my daughter went off to college and joined the school's network, it automatically renamed her machine and encrypted it. When I called the help desk at her school, they had no idea what to do.  I had to step them through their Azure system to find it.  This video was tremendously helpful. I saw exactly what he does, as I'm not an admin, but I could tell the admin where to find it:

bitlocker recovery key - microsoft account - azure

Hi Nicole,

I am facing the same problem currently with Microsft Surface Book 2 - I am unable to login to windows as it is asking for bitlocker recovery key - And I have never installed or knew about bitlocker untill this incident happened.

I just cannot afford to lose my data. Did you find any solution? Any help would be really really helpful.

Regards,

Ankit

I had the exact same issue.  After working on the PC and reading threads on the internet for 6 hours, I got pass the Bitlocker screen!!!

And this is what I did in this order.  You must do ALL the steps.  Doing each one only did not fix it for me.

- I reset the BIOS (not the PC) back to factory settings. Restarted

- Go back into BIOS (F2) and enable secure boot.  Click on exit and the PC should re-boot.

- At this point Windows booted up, I logged in,  and I immediately disabled the F*!*&% Bitlocker encryption!!!

I hope this helps somebody.  I know I tried a lot of different things I found online and that didn't work.  I know I was ready to format and re-load Windows until Dell said I had to pay full price for a copy of Windows 10 that I already owned. I already cursed on here once so I will leave it at that.