Back in January Microsoft encrypted all my hard drives without saying anything. I was playing around with a dual boot yesterday and somehow aggravated Secureboot. So my C: panicked and required a 40 character key to unlock.

Your key is backed up to the Microsoft account associated with your install. Which is considerate to the hackers. (and saved me from a re-install) But if you’ve got an unactivated copy, local account, or don’t know your M$ account credentials, your boned.

Control Panel > System Security > Bitlocker Encryption.

BTW, I was aware that M$ was doing this and even made fun of the effected users. Karma.

    • nargis@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      1 小时前

      I had a windows home installation too, local rules may vary, but mine (India), I could turn it off from the command prompt.

      manage-bde -off C: (or any other drive) was what I used.

      Edit: nevermind, you meant that you wanted to change the key. That’s not possible, unfortunately, you might have to use some other encryption software.

      • RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world
        21·
        14 小时前

        Disabling it entirely is possible, but I want to keep the encryption and set a proper password for it instead of the stupidly long recovery key. That and similar features seem to be locked behind the pro version.

      • Vahenir@lemmy.world
        71·
        23 小时前

        They do and it auto activates when you add a Microsoft account. It cannot be turned off on the home edition as it doesn’t have the full bitlocker settings. Came across this one on some machine i was working on a while ago and i ended up having to pull the SSD from the customers machine and plug it into something with pro to actually disable bitlocker.