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No bitlocker key

Anonymous
2025-02-18T22:21:24+00:00

A few months ago, I upgraded windows 10 to windows 11. It took forever, so I went to sleep. I woke up the next day and worked as usual, and didn’t think anything about it even though my computer slowed down tremendously. I did not know that I could roll back windows 11 within seven days or I would have. On February 4th my computer wouldn’t turn on, and I called a service person that used to work for Dell and he came to my house. It was only then when he took out my hard drive and put it in an easy drive, that I discovered that the hard drive was encrypted. He asked me what the 48 digit key was, and I looked at him like he was from outer space. He had me buy a motherboard and a connector that my plug would plug into. Well, the thing that my plug plugs into came in and the motherboard came a day later. It was the wrong motherboard, so I call Dell and I sent it to Del and they confirmed that it was a motherboard. So Dell installed a new motherboard And returned the computer to me with the original hard drive. I have found three of my accounts with Microsoft and two of the accounts show devices. The device that I need the 48 character key for is not one of the devices that Microsoft sees. Somebody please tell me how to decrypt this drive. Without a 48 character key, which I don’t have.

*** Moved from Windows / Windows 11 / Recovery and backup ***

Windows for business | Windows Client for IT Pros | Devices and deployment | Recovery key

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-20T05:53:16+00:00

    Hello

    Thank you for posting in the Microsoft community forum.

    Based on the description, I understand that your question is related to finding the Bitlocker recovery key.

    We can usually refer to the following route to find out the BitLocker recovery key, as this is a personal piece of information and will not be collected by Microsoft, so try to carefully find if the key was saved in the following places:

    1. On your Microsoft account: Sign in to your Microsoft account on another device to find your recovery key: If the device has been set up or BitLocker protection has been turned on by another user, the recovery key may be in that user's Microsoft account.
    2. On a hard copy that you saved: The recovery key may be on a hard copy that was saved when BitLocker was activated. See where you store important documents related to your computer.
    3. On a USB flash drive: Connect the USB flash drive to your locked PC and follow the instructions. If you saved the key as a text file on the flash drive, use a different computer to read the text file.
    4. In an Azure Active Directory account: If the device is signed in to an organization with a work or school email account, the recovery key might be stored in the Azure AD account of that organization associated with the device.

    If you can't locate a required BitLocker recovery key, I'm afraid you can't access that drive.

    Best regards

    Molly

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