Windows 10: Macrium Reflect - Issue Unlocking BitLockered Drive From Rescue Media

Got Macrium Refect Free 6.3.1835 running well on Windows 10. Except when booting from Macrium rescue media, I cannot unlock my C: drive.

My setup has a Bitlockered C: drive on a Samsung EVO 850 SSD, and my backup images are on E:, a portable BitLocker To Go USB3 HDD. My system is setup for UEFI/GPT boot.

The BitLocker encryption on C: has the Samsung self encrypting drive (hardware encryption) feature enabled. Test booting from a Windows Recovery Drive allows me to unlock BitLocker for both drives in the restore mode, by entering the keys.

In the Macrium Reflect Free rescue environment, I can open a command prompt and step through the manage-bde command lines to unlock E: (the external USB drive) just fine.

But when I attempt to do so for C:, I always get an error. It appears that the Samsung drive is available to be the restore target, but will be wiped during a restore. That would require re-enabling BitLocker afterwards and generating new keys.

The thing that puzzles me is that manage-bde is a Microsoft program, so I would expect it to work.

Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks!

:)

 

Blue Screen Error 'PC/device needs to be repaired file:/BCD error code:0xc000000d'

Brittany,

I just fixed an error like that on a Dell Inspiron yesterday. The best and easiest tool for fixing this is to use Macrium Reflect's Rescue Media. It has a "Fix Windows Boot Problems" option. This is what you have to do:

1. Download the "free" version of Macrium Reflect from here:


Download Macrium Reflect Free

2. Install it on a working computer and create the Rescue Media (Create Rescue Media). Make sure you set it to use
Windows PE version 10. If it has not picked that, click the "Change PE Version" and select PE version 10. You can create the Rescue Media on either a CD or a USB Flash drive although a USB Flash drive would be better and you
only need a minimum of a 1GB drive.

3. Once the Rescue Media is created, you need to start your problem laptop with the Rescue Media connected to it and change where you are booting from. As soon as you press the power button on the laptop, continually press the "F12" key.
This will allow you to access the Boot Options screen to modify from where your laptop will boot. It should eventually give you a list of devices to boot from. Select the USB Flash drive which contains the Rescue Media. Use the keyboard arrow keys to get to
the correct line and then {Enter} to select it. Once selected, it should then boot into Macrium Reflect running off the USB drive.

4. Follow the instructions on this page (How to fix Windows Boot problems) to perform the repair.

Good luck,

JohnD

 

Upgrading to an SSD - Can I still upgrade my windows 8 to windows 10?

If you're happy with the present install you could also save a System Image backup externally using the expert's choice free Macrium, swap the drives in and apply the image in 20 minutes using the bootable media it will create for you:

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/7363/macrium-re...

http://reflect.macrium.com/help/v5/how_to/rescu...

 

Hello zzzoom,

I do not recall if the Macrium free version allows for the addition of the Windows Bitlocker environmentals to the Macrium Rescue Media. I am a paid-version Macrium user.

This knowledge-base article from Macrium may help--> Adding BitLocker support to Windows PE - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

 

Hey, thanks for the reply!

Yes it does. In fact you can create it two ways: 1) Include BitLocker support + automatically include keys; 2) Include BitLocker support without saving any keys.

I have tried both methods with Rescue Media. I can unlock E: just fine, but neither method allows me to unlock my C: drive.

I am posting here because you need a licensed product to join the Macrium forum. Hoping someone here can point out something I may be overlooking.

 

It´s not clear to me what do you mean by:

"The BitLocker encryption on C: has the Samsung self encrypting drive (hardware encryption) feature enabled."

Are you using BitLocker or a different Samsung encryption? Or both?

 

Simple. Enable 'Encrypted Drive' in Samsung Magician. Reboot. Enable BitLocker in Windows 10. The entire drive is instantly BitLockered. No software encryption layer is necessary.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>manage-bde -status
BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 10.0.14393
Copyright (C) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Disk volumes that can be protected with
BitLocker Drive Encryption:
Volume C: []
[OS Volume]

Size: 232.33 GB
BitLocker Version: 2.0
Conversion Status: Fully Encrypted
Percentage Encrypted: 100.0%
Encryption Method: Hardware Encryption - 1.3.111.2.1619.0.1.2
Protection Status: Protection On
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: Unknown
Key Protectors:
Password
External Key
Numerical Password

 

I revisited this issue again yesterday. I am now running Macrium Reflect Free 7.1.2917, so with a fresh build of Win PE on my rescue media, I thought I would try again.

Still no luck with accessing or unlocking my encrypted Samsung SSD system drive. However unlocking my encrypted external USB drive, which is my image repository, works just fine. Can browse to the image to restore OK.

I realize that a workaround would be to just use 'Manage Bitlocker > Turn off BitLocker' from within Windows before attempting a restore. But I am assuming that in case I ever needed to restore, perhaps it's a good possibility that Windows would no longer boot. In that case I suppose I could also use the Samsung Magician boot utility 'Secure Erase' to reset my SSD to factory settings.

But I am really trying to understand why I cannot unlock my BitLockered C: drive. Whenever I attempt to use 'manage-bde –unlock C: -recoverypassword 111111-222222-333333-444444-555555-666666-777777-888888' from within the Macrium rescue environment, I get 'ERROR: an error occurred (code: 0x80070057)'.

If I boot from a Windows repair disk, I can enter the keys and unlock both drives.

Weird.

Here is a command window showing the 'manage-bde -status' for the two encrypted drives.