Sunday 23 February 2020

Dell Inspiron - Locked out due to BitLocker

I recently made some tiny changes to my Dell Inspiron BIOS. Silly me. Computer would not reboot. It demanded I enter a 48-digit BitLocker key. It was news to me I'd encrypted the drive with BitLocker. It's not something I'd naturally do because I'd expect to turn the laptop into a dual boot Windows/Linux, and I'm not sure Linux can understand BitLocker. Given I don't remember switching BitLocker on, I guess I must've bought it with BitLocker already installed.

It seems changing the BIOS activates the security system. The solution to the issue is:

  1. You're looking at a blue screen demanding you enter your BitLocker key:
  2. Click “Skip this drive”
  3. Click “Troubleshoot”
  4. Click “Advanced Options”
  5. Click “UEFI Firmware Settings”
  6. Click “Restart” – You will restart and enter the BIOS for your computer. The BIOS interface is different for every computer. In my case, it looked nothing like in the above video, and doing subsequent steps in the above video did not work. Doing the following DID work:
  7. Click “Restore Settings” button on the bottom of the Dell BIOS screen. Also see here if this setting is not evident.
  8. Click Restore “Factory Defaults”
  9. Save settings and the computer will reboot. In my case, BitLocker prompt screen is now gone and Windows boots normally.

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