Hi I have a Surface that came in with bitlocker enabled so I have the customer retrieve the key from Microsoft that worked but then her Microsoft login password failed It works fine for her to log into her Hotmail account and msft but it will not unlock the surface ideas?
Bit locker problem
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britechguy
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Presuming that the Windows 10 user account she's using to log in to the Surface is linked to the same Microsoft Account associated with her hotmail login, I'd just go to Microsoft.com and go through the "forgot password" process for that account.
After you change a Microsoft Account password (not unlike a Google Account password) that change propagates throughout the ecosystem accessed by that account. You should be able to log in to the Surface using that new password provided it has internet connectivity when you do to verify against the new password in the cloud and then retrieve it for local use going forward (so that you can log in to the Surface using it whether or not you have an internet connection).
Also, did she recently change her Microsoft Account password? If so, and she was trying to log in to the Surface using that password, but the Surface did not have internet connectivity at that time, it won't work. When there is no internet connectivity the fallback is to use a locally stored copy of the last known password (which is, of course, encrypted) until the opportunity exists to fetch the new one. In fact, it will keep using that old password until and unless you actually log in using the new one, which is what causes the local copy to be supplanted by it.
After you change a Microsoft Account password (not unlike a Google Account password) that change propagates throughout the ecosystem accessed by that account. You should be able to log in to the Surface using that new password provided it has internet connectivity when you do to verify against the new password in the cloud and then retrieve it for local use going forward (so that you can log in to the Surface using it whether or not you have an internet connection).
Also, did she recently change her Microsoft Account password? If so, and she was trying to log in to the Surface using that password, but the Surface did not have internet connectivity at that time, it won't work. When there is no internet connectivity the fallback is to use a locally stored copy of the last known password (which is, of course, encrypted) until the opportunity exists to fetch the new one. In fact, it will keep using that old password until and unless you actually log in using the new one, which is what causes the local copy to be supplanted by it.
nlinecomputers
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This. Trying to get in she must have changed her password. It got changed online but not on the surface because it didn’t have internet access. You will have to use the old password. If necessary, now that you have the BitLocker recovery key, you can use PCUNLOCKER to bypass the password one time, disable BitLocker and then get the unit synced again with the online account.
nlinecomputers
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Time to slave the drive to your data recovery pc and get what you can off the drive. Fabs and a manual grab for what ever is missed.
britechguy
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And when everything is said and done, unless some third-party requires its use, encourage this client NOT to use BitLocker.
Full drive encryption is another of those things in the security world that is becoming grossly overused in situations where it's simply not needed. And the amount of heartache I've observed that results from people losing material because they blithely, and without due consideration, turned on BitLocker or other full drive or device encryption without a second thought, and then it went south somehow, is huge.
There are other options, like VeraCrypt (for one), that allow you to create encrypted containers for those things that really warrant that level of protection. For most home users, that would be a very tiny subset of what is on their machines, and it doesn't take much thought to decide what that would be (not much more than, "If this were on paper, would I be really upset if someone were to get their hands on it and could it be used to do something like steal my identity?").
Full drive encryption is another of those things in the security world that is becoming grossly overused in situations where it's simply not needed. And the amount of heartache I've observed that results from people losing material because they blithely, and without due consideration, turned on BitLocker or other full drive or device encryption without a second thought, and then it went south somehow, is huge.
There are other options, like VeraCrypt (for one), that allow you to create encrypted containers for those things that really warrant that level of protection. For most home users, that would be a very tiny subset of what is on their machines, and it doesn't take much thought to decide what that would be (not much more than, "If this were on paper, would I be really upset if someone were to get their hands on it and could it be used to do something like steal my identity?").
that won't work, bitlocker will not completely unlock without her msft password too, can't access the data at all offline
Computer Bloke
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Rather difficult to do with a Surface, and yet another way in which glued-and-soldered-down construction blocks off possible avenues for repair.
Progress? Hah!
You might get away with cloning the drive to another one, unBitlockering the clone, and then cloning it back. I've done this once and it went surprisingly smoothly, but I was holding my breath the entire time.
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Yeah nothing is working, never ran into this before where it required both recovery key and msft password to unlock, can't access windows at all. Unless maybe her registry is just too badly hosed to access her password, wish there was a way to connect to wifi from recovery somehow for it to detect her current msft password
nlinecomputers
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D’oh. I read surface and it didn’t register in my tiny little mind. Lol
seashore
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nada, tried that. actually I can't remember when dart ever worked for internet, I don't think it loads the drivers correctly
I FINALLY got it sorted out without using the user admin password to decrypt! Booted to recovery and followed just the bit using the key NOT the user password, it worked to decrypt the drive from recovery, then I was able to do system restore!
https://www.repairwin.com/how-to-disable-bitlocker-in-windows-recovery-environment-winre/
https://www.repairwin.com/how-to-disable-bitlocker-in-windows-recovery-environment-winre/
nlinecomputers
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