I use pro myself but I've seen many posts on here with folk using 'home' but post bios flash windows wants the bitlocker key at restart.

two things I would suggest:

firstly turn off  bitlocker drive encryption in control panel.

secondly do the bios update flash manually from an usb stick. the update most likely has a security update from intel hence it's labelled critical. 

That raises another question. I thought only the Pro version has Bitlocker, not the Home version which is what I have.

what I suggest you do before you flash update your bios is to associate your laptop with a microsoft account. it should then assign a bitlock key if bitlock is somehow enabled that you can use if windows asks for it post bios flash.

Thanks, the PC is already associated with an MS account. I will check out the BitLocker situation and try downloading the key just in case.

Thanks, I'll look into that. There was a time when the popular wisdom was to not update BIOS unless you were having issues. I don't know if that has changed now or not.

I do know that I won't be using an external monitor so not sure this is worth the trouble.

@jcgc 

You do not have BitLocker installed.

Similar to BitLocker, device encryption is a feature designed to protect your data from unauthorized access.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-enable-device-encryption-windows-10-home

Regards,

U2

The image I posted above is what I see when searching for Bitlocker.

@jcgc 

Click on "Start"

Then type "Manage BitLocker"

Hit enter.

What does it say???

Regards,

U2