Windows 10: Can I use bitlocker on a system with dual boot

I have a computer with dual boot of Windows 10 Pro and Windows 11 Home each taking up 1 TB in different SSDs I want to encrypt the Windows 10 Pro without it affecting the other OS. Is it possible? if it is what are the best practices and what should I avoid? this is my first time using bitlocker

:)

 

BitLocker recovery keys after Dual Boot

Hi Varun Kelkar,



Welcome to Microsoft Community. I'm Mosken, let me help you.



According to your description, I knew that you were asked to enter the Bitlocker recovery key when dual booting Windows 11 with Windows + Linux. Is that right?

According to your description and the current situation, you may have used Bitlocker to encrypt the Windows system partition, but after you install the Linux system, the original system partition state has been changed, so you will be asked to enter the recovery key.



Generally, you will be prompted to save the recovery key when you encrypt with Bitlocker, as shown in the figure below.

• If you choose "Save to your Microsoft account", then it will exist in the Microsoft account you logged in when encrypting.
  

• If you choose the other three, it should be a .txt file with a long name contains alphanumerics, please recall whether and where you have saved it.
  

If you can't find the recovery key in your Microsoft account or the file that included the recovery key, I suggest you try unlocking the partition in Linux, back up your data, and then format the partition.

If it cannot be unlocked, sorry, there is currently no other effective solution to unlock a partition encrypted with Bitlocker, you can only reformat the partition to use it normally again.

The above steps are provided based on the information I have learned so far, and hope that could help you a little. If the problem still exists, please provide us a full PSR from the beginning, through the whole process, and until the error message is displayed, so we can further investigate.



Best Regards,

| Microsoft Community Support Specialist

 

Bitlocker fails with dual boot

I answered with the suggestion you not use Bitlocker because all cases I see about Bitlocker here are either from those who didn't want it or who lost their files because it malfunctioned. There is no way to rescue flles if a Bitlocker drive will not decrypt. But you can protect yourself from this by having a secondary physical backup and a real time cloud backup.

If this is not important to you and you want to proceed, then yes I would have the Dual Boot configured to boot from the BIOS to not give Bitlocker any reason to malfunction.

The benefit of having separate hard drives to dual boot is that you can unplug the other one when installing so that each drive has it's own boot files and is independently bootable via the BIOS Boot priority or Boot menu interrupt key. If you leave the other drive plugged in during install of the second OS, it edits the boot files on the existing drive and doesn't put any on the second install, so the second-installed drive cannot boot on its own without the first one installed.

It's possible your install was done differently so is independently bootable. The way to test this is to pull the data cable off the first installed drive to see if the second one will boot, either from the BIOS or Boot menu key shown on first screen at Startup. If not then your options are to create a boot partition on the second installed drive so it's independently bootable.

Ironically once these drives are independently bootable, you can still add them to a Window Boot menu using EasyBCD if you like that interface, but the difference is that the second installed drive is no longer dependent on the first on if it fails or you want to remove it.

Before going any further please post a screenshot of Disk Management, which I read like a doctor reads X-rays. Follow the steps here so I can see everything needed to advise you: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/foru...

Once we get the drives independently bootable you can encrypt the desired drive with Bitlocker. Just make sure it's backed up at all times with a physical backup to external as well as real-time cloud backup, in case Bitlocker fails and takes your files with it. There is no way to rescue flles if a Bitlocker drive will not decrypt.

 

Bitlocker fails with dual boot

I want the following final dual boot:

1. Physical drive 1, no bitlocker, Windows 10

2. Physical drive 2, bitlocker, Windows 10

My machine is an HP z840 with TPM 2, enabled

After I install windows on the second drive, dual boot works perfectly. If I turn on bitlocker on the second OS, I am able to log into the first OS normally. However, the second OS asks for the bitlocker key, says it can't find the TPM, and does not accept the bitlocker key if entered.

I have tried,

1. Using the non-TPM option to save bitlocker key to a USB drive (same behavior as above)

2. togglinging TPM enable in bios (no change)

3. clearing TPM at various points in the process.

Of note, Windows says that TPN is available in the *second* OS *before* I set up bitlocker.

Any thoughts? I looked at posts in this an other forums, but there seemed to be more guessing than expertise.