We had a customer in yesterday with a Dell Latitude Windows 10 laptop. The system, running Windows 10, was requesting a BitLocker key even though the user never remembered this full disk (FDE) encryption application being setup. They were starting to panic because their research on Google informed them that losing your BitLocker key can result in accessible data. BitLocker normally uses XTS-AES (128 or 256bit) which is very strong. One website even advised our customer, if they waited a few years, BitLockered disks could be easily cracked when quantum computing becomes more mainstream. But understandably they were not prepared to wait a few years…
However, this is a problem which Drive Rescue had encountered before. On some Dell laptops, the “Expert Key Management” in the system’s BIOS can sometimes go skewways resulting in a BitLocker Recovery key request window appearing unexpectedly.
Recovering from BitLocker
The fix for this problem is simple. Enter the BIOS of the Dell system. Navigate to “SecureBoot” and then click to expand the section called “Expert Key Management”. Now you should see a “Restore Settings” button, followed by “Factory Settings”. Select this and then click on “ok”. When exiting the BIOS, don’t forget to save changes. Restart your system. The BitLocker key request box should now be gone and all your files should be fully accessible. No data recovery needed!
Drive Rescue offer a data recovery service in Dublin, Ireland for BitLocker encrypted disks (S-ATA, PCIe, mSata) even in cases where a TPM chip is used. We frequently recover from disks removed from laptop systems such as the Dell Latitude, HP Elitebook, Fujitsu LifeBook and Lenovo Thinkpad T and X Series of laptops. Phone us on 1890 571 571