Bitlocker help

[HavocXphere]

Never mind. Found a way around Microsoft's retarded Home edition & lack of bitlocker. Manage-bde commandline tool is still available. Just the GUI is missing.

I've painted myself into a bit of a corner.

I've got 3x encrypted drives here from an old PC. 1x SSD and 2x HDDs.

All of them with the same password. The password isn't what I thought it was. *sigh*

On the plus side, I've got recovery keys for 2 of them so I can get to the data. (Hopefully the SSD is the missing key then I'll just nuke that one)

Problem is I can't get bitlocker disabled - Win 10 Home doesn't seem to allow anything except decryption. Copying it off, format & back on is not an option...don't have a spare drive with that much space.

Ideas?

(And no there is nothing super dodgy on the drives. They had to be shipped via dodgy courier company so it seemed prudent to encrypt them in case the PC got liberated).

EDIT: On a side note these USB3 HDD dock things are the bees knees.

 

[Stillie]

I'm sure u have to decrypt before turning it off?

 

[HavocXphere]

I'm sure u have to decrypt before turning it off?

Yeah - in this case I've got the backup codes to decrypt it (for 2 of 3 anyway). Eventually got it sorted via the back-up key.

For the biggest drive anyway. I was in a rush so I missed saving the 3rd key.

--------

For future reference @ anyone googling this@

Unlock the drive with the password / backup key (if you don't have either then game over)
Open a command prompt with administrator rights and type in
manage-bde -off F:
where F is the drive letter in question

 

[Stillie]

Yeah - in this case I've got the backup codes to decrypt it (for 2 of 3 anyway). Eventually got it sorted via the back-up key.

For the biggest drive anyway. I was in a rush so I missed saving the 3rd key.

--------

For future reference @ anyone googling this@

Unlock the drive with the password / backup key (if you don't have either then game over)
Open a command prompt with administrator rights and type in
manage-bde -off F:
where F is the drive letter in question

as much as i love CMD, this can be done in control panel? unless that was stuffed up for some reason?

 

[waynegohl]

Sorry for the necro!!

Yesterday I was asked to have a look at a Surface RT tablet that was locked with Bitlocker. It gave me a code but did not know what it was for so did some googling. I came across a few threads and it seemed to me to be a waste of time because i didn't know what they were talking about and even using command prompt to retrieve the info went over my head so I tried something else.

I just reset it to factory defaults and it unlocked the device to use.

Very easy and simple if you dont mind losing anything on it I guess.

 

[HavocXphere]

Sorry for the necro!!

Yesterday I was asked to have a look at a Surface RT tablet that was locked with Bitlocker. It gave me a code but did not know what it was for so did some googling. I came across a few threads and it seemed to me to be a waste of time because i didn't know what they were talking about and even using command prompt to retrieve the info went over my head so I tried something else.

I just reset it to factory defaults and it unlocked the device to use.

Very easy and simple if you dont mind losing anything on it I guess.

Well it boils down to three options:
1) You have the password
2) You have the recovery file/key
3) You nuke it

There is no option 4.

 

[waynegohl]

True

 

[Traq]

as much as i love CMD, this can be done in control panel? unless that was stuffed up for some reason?

Windows Home Edition does not feature the BitLocker Management component - that is Pro edition and Enterprise.

However most functionality is still maintained in command prompt and PowerShell