Windows 10: Bitlocker self-activated after upgrade to Windows 11- no recovery key available

My new ThinkPad X1 Carbon required a motherboard replacement after only six months. During that time I upgraded to Windows 11,After the motherboard work was complete we faced blue Bitlocker Key request screen to boot and the laptop has been a brick for two weeks.To my knowledge, I never turned on Bitlocker and thus, never had a key to recover located anywhere. It wasn't in my AAD area; there were no keys on my M365 account and none were showing on any of my Microsoft personal accounts.I can only assume that Bitlocker was auto-activated during the Win11 installation without any notification to

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Bitlocker self-activation - no recovery key

Hello,

I'm hoping someone here can help me. I upgraded my Windows 10 system last week. At the end of the upgrade, it advised that Avast wanted to upgrade as well, so I said yes and that upgrade went ahead.

However, somehow during that process Bitlocker has been triggered. I did not set up Bitlocker when I bought my laptop in February this year, so I do not have a recovery key. I've been speaking to Microsoft and they suggested that the Avast update might
be responsible for this.

After speaking to Microsoft and Lenovo technocal support for days now, I still have no clear answers and can't get into my computer. I can't even do a clean install of Windows because I'm locked out of the c drive.

If anyone else is aware of this happening and know what the fix is, I will be forever grateful. Just to confirm, I did not set up Bitlocker so there is no recovery key - I've looked on the appropriate section of Microsoft's settings 50 times in the hope
that it might appear, but no!

Also, one last idiosyncratic thing... I'm running Windows 10 Home which Microsoft say is not compatible with Bitlocker. So I'm actually stuck in a paradox!

Thank you in advance,
Anna

 

bitlocker recovery key

Hi Singh,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

In order to get clarity on this issue and assist you with appropriate troubleshooting steps, please reply with the answers to the questions below.

1. Are you not able login to your computer due to BitLocker Recovery Key?
2. Did you ever setup BitLocker Recovery Key on your computer?
3. Are you not able to login to your Microsoft Account to find the BitLocker Recovery Key?
4. Are you using Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Professional?

Meanwhile, try finding BitLocker Recovery Key if you have ever setup BitLocker Recovery Key for your computer.

Please elaborate on the issue, so that we can understand the concern and get back to us to help you further.

 

WIndows 11 Bitlocker recovery key

Try this to reset your Microsoft account password: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/reset-a-forgotten-microsoft-account-password

It's your Microsoft password that you need to reset. You can have a Gmail alias as your account ID but the Gmail account password is not what needs to be reset.

Finding your BitLocker recovery key in Windows: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/finding-your-bitlocker-recovery-key-in-windows

How was BitLocker activated on my device?

There are three common ways for BitLocker to start protecting your device:

• Your device is a modern device that meets certain requirements to automatically enable device encryption: In this case your BitLocker recovery key is automatically saved to your Microsoft account before protection is activated.
  
• An owner or administrator of your device activated BitLocker protection (also called device encryption on some devices) through the Settings app or Control Panel: In this case the user activating BitLocker either selected where to save the key or (in the case of device encryption) it was automatically saved to their Microsoft account.
  
• A work or school organization that is managing your device (currently or in the past) activated BitLocker protection on your device: In this case the organization may have your BitLocker recovery key.
  

BitLocker is always activated by or on behalf of a user with full administrative access to your device, whether this is you, another user, or an organization managing your device. The BitLocker setup process requires the creation of a recovery key at the time of activation.

Hopefully you will be able to find it! You can ask your computer manufacturer if you can't find it on your own.