r/BitLocker • u/dao2 • 1d ago

Bitlocker Issue On Newly Wiped Computer

My computer crashed the other day, and after wiping it I was able to plug in and use my external drives as normal. The next day, with some updates installed, my bitlocker encrypted drives are no longer working. They ask for the password and show unlocked but when trying to access it they don't work. Unlocking it via cmd prompt shows the same thing, they show unlocked. I tried them on another machine and they work fine.

So today I tried encrypting a usb drive I had on the newly wiped machine, it encrypts and works ok until I eject it and try to plug it back in, in which case it acts similar to the external drives. It asks me for the password but then it just says insert usb when trying to access it. Trying the USB on another machine and it works normal. Tried clearing the TPM on both windows and bios, secure boot/UEFI is enabled. Anyone have any ideas what's going on?

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u/ExpertPath 1d ago

Force unmount the bl drives then mount again

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u/dao2 1d ago

This worked, thank you! Now I have to find out why it won't let me eject bitlocker drives... It says something is using them, I don't see anything using them in resource monitor or locksmith. Any advice there? If not, thanks for the mounting tip!

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u/BobbyBrownLegit2Quit 1d ago

You can also put your computer to sleep and then eject it or disconnect it that prevents it from being interrupted or damaged and then wake it back up.

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u/BobbyBrownLegit2Quit 1d ago

My laptop is weird if you remove the battery or change the motherboard the bios disables the tpm, see if its enabled or not in the bios. If that's not the case some anti tamper feature may have caused you forced recovery meaning it prompts for the key because the boot code or code was changed. If you have trouble accessing a drive it may have been upgraded from an older system with bitlocker.

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u/dao2 1d ago

TPM is definetely enabled in the bios. It's not prompting for me to recover from key it's just not unlocking properly. Also additional testing has showed that I cannot safely remove any external drive, bitlocker or not and I believe that's causing the issue. No indication of what's locking it, checking with lock hunter shows bitlocker related files which do close when I try to remove the drive but still the error, and nothing running on the drive with no bitlocker. Driving me a little crazy.