Submitted 10 months ago by moe90@feddit.nl to technology@lemmy.world
Yes! This happened to me when I turned off the ‘safe boot’ on a laptop via BIOS. It locked me out but I had never agreed to install Bitlocker in the first place, let alone know what key I was supposed to have. It was a total loss & I had to wipe the drive.
MS is hot trash.
The decryption key is saved in the Microsoft account, the error message explains that
I also almost got a panic attack when my Lenovo updated the bios and i was locked out
They’re making an increasingly compelling case for me to switch to Linux.
where_steamos_orang.jpeg
I had a small Win11 machine that I now have Ubuntu on. Win11 wouldn’t let me use the whole disk because of the BitLocker bullshit. I had to dig through the menus and disable it then wait hours for it to finish decrypting. Fuck Microsoft. I’m proud to say me and my GF dont have a single Microsoft product in our home, and I’m keeping that way.
Why couldn’t you just format the entire drive with the linux installer?
I could only format the free space not used by the windows partition.
Since when is Bitlocker required? None of my files are encrypted, and I’ve been using 11 since it came out.
It automatically encrypts the drive only if admin has a Microsoft account (to backup the key on their cloud servers for easier LEO access data recovery) and the PC is a prebuilt
Did you use Rufus? You can bypass Bitlocker. Or your machine does not have TPM 2.0…?
Yeah I used Rufus. Always do for every OS install. Explains it lol
Every retail PC I’ve seen with win11 has bitlocker enabled. Screwed one over as they forgot their password…
Bitlocker encrypts your drive, not single files. Once the computer is booted up, it’s completely transparent to the user.
But my PC doesn’t even have a password. So how can my files be encrypted? I thought a password was manditory for file encryption to work.
Your title is borked. Maybe edit that
It’s duplicated in case half of it is lost to Bitlocker
If they are still using windows, their privacy and data safety was never of importance to them, anyway.
Or just get the data back from the backups they made.
Data privacy != Documents/data on hard disk
If I have documents on my harddisk, they are private. If a windows 11 user has documents on their harddisk, they are not.
I am LITERALLY in the process of migrating my servers to my new NixOS server after months of prep work. This couldn’t have been more timely lol Funniest part is, I just did my own TPM based encryption on my drives.
SERVERS???
Just one server, but multiple “services” (i.e. Jellyfin, Minecraft, Discord bots, Wordpress, etc). Server is kind of a misnomer there
Windows is malware.
I remember when Linux users used to say that, but it turns out they were right.
I’m glad I leaved that cursed OS behind.
That’s extraordinary, even for Microsoft.
If you’re on Win 11 Pro, up to 23H2, follow these steps to prevent 24H2:
win+R, type GPEDIT.MSC, press enter Locate “Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update\Manage updates offered from Windows Update\Select the target feature update version”
Now click the “Enabled” button, type “Windows 11” in the first prompt and “23H2” in the second prompt and click “Apply”
That will prevent 24H2 from being downloaded and installed. When they’ve fixed this and the “Recall” mess, you can go back and undo the setting.
You can still do the “bypassnro” thing, it’s just a script that’s been removed. All it did was write a registry entry and reboot. This is the registry key entry - you can still press shift-F10 at the same point and type this manually:
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f shutdown /r /t 0
another method to try is this, instead of the registry entry:
start ms-cxh:localonly
but I haven’t tried that one yet.
I’ve fixed it by axing my bitlocker encrypted partition that contained my Pro version OS and just installed arch.
I love how Windows fix has terminal and GUI configurations mixed as an unholy concoction directly from the HQ.
What a stinker of an OS. Linux never looked so good
Its why I switched to Linux.
I’ve been a Linux user since 2010 and I’m glad I developed that skillset
I’m of the opinion that encryption based security should be compartmentalized. IE, an encrypted folder, or “safe” app. Safes in housing are already a concept that is already commonly known so it would be natural to extend a safe into the digital realm. This would also help in the idea that safes are locked with a key, so if the user loses their keys, whatever is inside the safe, might as well be lost.
Now if EVERYTHING is a safe, (always on encryption). People will never known the difference. Its a dangerous type of security that is likely to be more a loss than a benefit.
But, houses have locks on the doors. The whole point of the house is to be a safe for people. Security is all about the threat model, your risk assessment should inform the security measures that make sense in the security/convenience continuum. Not everyone will be equally well served by the exact same risk mitigation methods.
The point of whole disk encryption is to delay or nullify physical device control. If your disk is not encrypted, but you have a single encrypted file a bad actor wants to access. If they get physical control, then it is game over. They have all the time and power in the world to crack down that one file. Now, most people don’t have any one file(s) like that, but instead are worried about their private life in general. Without encryption, physical access to the device means total access to their entire life, the house had no locks and the thieves just waltzed in and took everything of value. Whole disk encryption is opting for a sturdier door, with better locks. Physical control is still bad, but access is orders of magnitude harder. Sure, if you lose the only key to your house, you better be prepared to break windows or walls to get in, but that is a user responsibility.
For most folks they could just write down their encryption passphrase in a secure location with the rest of their papers since 99.9% of the risk is thieves stealing their laptops. For most folks the biggest secure item they have is the one they use constantly their browser and all the passwords it stores to all their services. You know the thing they use constantly.
A compartmentalized approach makes sense when the laptop contains really vulnerable data like laptops which have been stolen with bunches of client data on it or a journalists communication with confidential sources etc etc. In that case you STILL want to encrypt the whole thing but you want to separately encrypt the really important stuff with a different key so that every time you open your laptop to watch cat videos on youtube you aren’t also unlocking all the data you will have to tell your companies users you lost.
You are arguing for selective encryption, but I can’t really find any technical argument in your comment.
Whether we are speaking of encryption at transit or rest, there’s a general consensus that encrypting everything is best in every way except possibly performance for select cases.
For example, it allows hiding (meta)data about the really important bits, and with computers it’s really difficult to tell which bits of (meta)data could be combined to abuse. Tampering is a consideration as well.
hearing about this was my final straw, thank god
I read the article but am not smarter than before. I heard some time ago that windows does encrypt the drive but you need an active online account and the key will be saved online. So do people forget their online passwords and methods to recover that said account? I dont like m$ and am using linux, but people loosing their passwords, being uninformed about their systems and dont so backups is not the direct fault of the operating system.
Setting up encryption has previously been an affirmative step wherein the user opted into being unable to access their data if they lose their password. Because of this users have the opportunity to back up their recovery key you know after they even learn what one is.
Having it happen on upgrade to an existing machine is inherently confusing and its easy to see how it could lead to data loss.
Lose access to your MS account = lose your data forever. No warnings, no second chances. Many people learn about BitLocker the first time it locks them out.
It seems like they just got locked out of their Microsoft account (which stores the bitlocker key). Idk why they can’t just reset their password or if this article talks about the times where people couldn’t do that due to missing email access or maybe resetting the password deletes the bitlocker keys?
Either way though, the problem is that Microsoft is forcing encryption on everyone and not properly educating them on the consequences like “Backup your decryption key if you care about the data” in a way a normal user actually listens to.
Just did a fresh win 11 install . In order to update bios before installing Linux. Refused to let me install without wifi but a quick googling and a command prompt later it was possible to work around easily
you need an active online account and the key will be saved online
Is there a legit reason for this? Why can’t they just encrypt the data with the password used to access the online account?
Because then you can’t change your password. Since you would have to decrypt all the hard drives that use windows with that account, and then encrypt them again with the new one.
This also means that if you forget your password you are fucked.
I helped my sister deal with this. Bitlocker activated itself, the keys were in her account which she had access to. She had done everything properly but nothing worked to resolve it.
There’s countless forum posts on it since about 2021 if you go looking for it. None of the recovery processes worked so I reformatted and enabled bitlocker at the start. Next time I visit, she’s getting Linux Mint.
Fuck Microsoft. End users shouldn’t be expected to troubleshoot like that.
Bitlocker can be turned on without having an account on device iirc.
Correct, can be turned on and it will provide you the key to be saved as a file if I recall
The bot that posted this is not programmed to edit typos.
really interesting to see that they have more posts than comments
Really wish we didn’t have bots posting at all
You can merge the choices and resolve the conflict: Microsoft users are dumb.
Thanks?
Clearly you’ve never used a Mac. It wasn’t until 2024 that you could snap windows, they have a built in dark mode but the word processor that ships with their computer requires you to use a dark page template if you want black background/white text, and lord forgive you if you want to take a screenshot.
Found the Linux user.
Not Arc though, they would have said so
When are stockholders going to realize that the current Microsoft CEO is ruining Windows?
They know, read their yearly financial reports. They said for a decade that Windows is not only not profitable, there’s no future for it. Microsoft for several years now is a company that sells cloud and opensource services(Linux, Github, etc).
Kinda joking because in many ways windows is better than ever… but also making windows have non starter features enhances Linux adoption soooo
I’m getting daily or near daily BSODs since switch back from Debian. I was okay with Vista and 8, and maybe I’m just getting crankier as I get older, but I definitely am not a fan of the current direction Windows is taking.
It seems like a buggy mess to me.
Better than ever? What? Bloated than ever maybe.
I’ve decided to switch to Linux come october. I have some reasons I wanna wait as long as I can, but until then I’m leaving Windows behind.
If you’re new to Linux, I suggest at the very least starting to learn now. If you have a spare device you can install it on, an old laptop or something, dual boot on your existing machine or use Virtualbox…Start learning now, while you still consider Windows an option.
My own journey to the Linux platform included several instances of the following scenario:
I need to get something done. It’s simple, in Windows 7 I know how to do it in seconds. It’s so simple that I don’t know the words for it, just the thing to click to do it. But it doesn’t work that way in Linux, even the vocabulary is different, and you need this done right now because you’re working on something and you don’t have time to stop and learn this right now.
Boot into Windows, get your job done and turned in. Then look up how to do it in Linux later. Eventually you stop hitting that wall.
You’ve decided you have seven months. I’d get to it.
I’ve decided to switch my gaming PC to Linux…a few weeks ago.
No ragrets. My games run faster, I no longer need extra shit to make Windows work the way I want it to work, and I can remote into it however I want without running into artificial roadblocks.
Get started early so you have time to acclimate and address issues. You are going to hate it if you urgently need your computer for something and something unexpected happens.
Something broke.
I blame bitlocker.
DUDE
FIX YOUR FUCKING TITLE
I didn’t expect Windows to become THAT shit. Well it’s good for Linux I guess.
It tech here. Yup sure does. For enterprise customers it gets saved in active directory anyway. But for home users, no way. For new devices I always create a local account and turn off bitlocker if it happens to be enabled. Most people don’t remember their email password, some don’t even remember their email address. So many times I’ve had to remove the drive of a dead PC or laptop and copy all their files off of it, because people just don’t make backups. But already happenend a few times now that a private customer got suckered into making a Microsoft account by one of those full screen pop ups. Probably set it up with an E-Mail some relative of theirs created just so they can download stuff of their Phones App store. And all their stuff just gets automatically encrypted. Bye Bye all the photos you had taken for the last 10 years. Thanks Microsoft.
All of the data I actually care about is stored on a NAS and backed up in triplicate. The only data actually on my PC are program files.
I’m in favor of a heavy handed push towards encryption, I think most people don’t realize how important this is (now more than ever), but windows should be guiding and educating on this not requiring, and it should have absolutely nothing to do with an email address or online account.
ShitLocker
Fix that title gore please
Windows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft’s forcedWindows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft’s forced BitLocker encryption
I had a stroke reading the thread title.
I saw this problem coming a mile away
Windows is ransomware now
KonalaKoala@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This is already looking like Microsuck is asking for a Windows 11/BitLocker based Class Action Lawsuit against them for this data lose blunder, and hopefully get their currently CEO fired.