D
Digamma
The computer in question:
HP-Elitebook 840 G3 - running windows 10 professional
Hi,
After arriving to work today, I was greeted with a wonderful "please enter your bitlocker key" message on my computer, completely locking me out of my system. The last thing I did the day before was to let my computer complete a windows update (the june 10 cumulative update, I'm pretty sure) by using the update and shut down option. Nothing else was installed, or changed, on the entire system - in fact, the machine itself has not seen much use because of Covid-19 in the past few months. No one has remote access to my computer, I don't run any other antivirus software other than malwarebytes and windows defender, and I am the admin of my system and it requires a password to access normally.
The most important part to take home here is that I did not configure bitlocker at any point during the ownership of this PC (Since september 2018), in fact, I didn't even know I had the option to use bitlocker until it had locked me out, and then it was too late to think about configuring it, because it was done automatically during this update.
Here's the problem:
In spite of Microsoft claiming that "Bitlocker should not allow encryption without depositing the key in your MS Account at the link you gave." [source: Windows 10 Finding BitLocker recovery key], this is exactly what happened. My microsoft account says my BitLocker is on, and no bitlocker recovery keys have been uploaded, and I definitely did not print it out or save it as a file - and if the key was saved to my computer, then it's been encrypted too - way to go!
And just for the record, there are also no key's stored here: Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online. , so don't try telling me to go look there either.
What I have tried:
I have called Microsoft support, got asked repeatedly "did it happen because of an update?", and then passed between calls for about an hour before being told that there was nothing they could do, and that I should contact HP - because they might have activated it remotely (excuse me, what?)
So I called HP and they said that "only Microsoft can activate Bitlocker" and if it had been activated without a key being saved, then I'm screwed, and I'll need to reformat my harddrive and reinstall windows 10. Which is an unacceptable solution to a problem caused by a routine windows update.
EDIT: I remembered that I installed this windows 10 installation during my masters thesis using my student account, and so I also checked Microsoft Azure, and lo and behold - the device is listed... But there are no bitlocker keys listed with the device there either (keep in mind, I log into this machine using the account I'm currently writing this question on). I have contacted my admin to double check, but there should have been no reason why my account alone got bitlockere'd, when no other person at my department had the same happen to them.
I have been looking around, and there appears to be a much greater than normal amount of requests for assistance pertaining to a random activation of BitLocker without a key being saved. Now, a computer failing to boot is usually not a big deal, because you can still recover the files on your harddrive, but when an update not only forces the activation of the complete encryption of all the files on your computer, and then also throws away the key, almost completely ensuring that you cannot recover your files, that's a pretty big issue.
I don't want a canned response, because I have already tried all of the advice given in other threads about this - I simply wish for Microsoft to step up and find a solution that doesn't involve me needing to spend the better half of a day reinstalling and configuring all of the software I use on a regular day basis, after also discarding a large chunk of important personal files (thankfully, no work related files were harmed in the encrypting of my stuff)
Continue reading...
HP-Elitebook 840 G3 - running windows 10 professional
Hi,
After arriving to work today, I was greeted with a wonderful "please enter your bitlocker key" message on my computer, completely locking me out of my system. The last thing I did the day before was to let my computer complete a windows update (the june 10 cumulative update, I'm pretty sure) by using the update and shut down option. Nothing else was installed, or changed, on the entire system - in fact, the machine itself has not seen much use because of Covid-19 in the past few months. No one has remote access to my computer, I don't run any other antivirus software other than malwarebytes and windows defender, and I am the admin of my system and it requires a password to access normally.
The most important part to take home here is that I did not configure bitlocker at any point during the ownership of this PC (Since september 2018), in fact, I didn't even know I had the option to use bitlocker until it had locked me out, and then it was too late to think about configuring it, because it was done automatically during this update.
Here's the problem:
In spite of Microsoft claiming that "Bitlocker should not allow encryption without depositing the key in your MS Account at the link you gave." [source: Windows 10 Finding BitLocker recovery key], this is exactly what happened. My microsoft account says my BitLocker is on, and no bitlocker recovery keys have been uploaded, and I definitely did not print it out or save it as a file - and if the key was saved to my computer, then it's been encrypted too - way to go!
And just for the record, there are also no key's stored here: Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online. , so don't try telling me to go look there either.
What I have tried:
I have called Microsoft support, got asked repeatedly "did it happen because of an update?", and then passed between calls for about an hour before being told that there was nothing they could do, and that I should contact HP - because they might have activated it remotely (excuse me, what?)
So I called HP and they said that "only Microsoft can activate Bitlocker" and if it had been activated without a key being saved, then I'm screwed, and I'll need to reformat my harddrive and reinstall windows 10. Which is an unacceptable solution to a problem caused by a routine windows update.
EDIT: I remembered that I installed this windows 10 installation during my masters thesis using my student account, and so I also checked Microsoft Azure, and lo and behold - the device is listed... But there are no bitlocker keys listed with the device there either (keep in mind, I log into this machine using the account I'm currently writing this question on). I have contacted my admin to double check, but there should have been no reason why my account alone got bitlockere'd, when no other person at my department had the same happen to them.
I have been looking around, and there appears to be a much greater than normal amount of requests for assistance pertaining to a random activation of BitLocker without a key being saved. Now, a computer failing to boot is usually not a big deal, because you can still recover the files on your harddrive, but when an update not only forces the activation of the complete encryption of all the files on your computer, and then also throws away the key, almost completely ensuring that you cannot recover your files, that's a pretty big issue.
I don't want a canned response, because I have already tried all of the advice given in other threads about this - I simply wish for Microsoft to step up and find a solution that doesn't involve me needing to spend the better half of a day reinstalling and configuring all of the software I use on a regular day basis, after also discarding a large chunk of important personal files (thankfully, no work related files were harmed in the encrypting of my stuff)
Continue reading...