Lenovo X301 Bitlocker asking for recover key every time..


  1. Posts : 11
    Windows 7
       #1

    Lenovo X301 Bitlocker asking for recover key every time..


    I went out and bought a 128gb 1.8" SSD for the purpose of upgrading my x301 to Win 7. I really wanted to preserve my old XP environment on the stock 64gb.

    I did a fresh Win 7 Ultimate install, initially I installed the 64bit version but found my VPN software would not support it so then I wiped and installed 32 bit. I did leave the 100mb partition that the 64bit version created.

    Installed Win 7 32bit, installed the lenovo software update program and let it put all of the software on the laptop. Did the win 7 update thing (this all took the better part of a day).

    I wresteled the TPM chip and now have it owned by win 7. Had to do the "hit esc" till the red win7 loader, power off, enter bios, clear keys method, but it worked. Now Win 7 says it ownes the tpm.

    Trying to turn on Bitlocker doing the "key test" results in the screen on every reboot saying that something has changed. I then turned on bitlocker, let it encrypt drive without doing the test and it completed sucessfully but every reboot asks for the recovery key.

    I've tried just about every "fix" I can find for this, including, changing bios boot order to only include hdd, suspending/resuming BL and a host of other things as well, bios updated. Nothing seems to work. I'd really like to use bit locker but not if it is not going to work right.

    I did come across a post that involved some policy editing then turning of/on again and have not yet tried that.

    Just wondering if leaving the 100meg partition from my first 64bit install might have something to do with my probelm as I've read that is where they keys are stored.

    Since all of this encrypting/descrypting takes a lot of time so I'm limited on how much I can do.

    Any suggestions would be great. Seems like lots of people have trouble with bitlocker for various reasons.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 11
    Windows 7
    Thread Starter
       #2

    I believe I found the problem enabling bitlocker on my x301. I tried just about every possible thing I could find on the internet and was unable to get it enabled. Every time on the next boot I would get the message (pre windows), from the bios that the environment had been changed and bitlocker would fail to encrypt the drive. If I encrypted the drive without the bitlocker test it would encrypt but every boot would make me enter the recovery key in order to boot.

    Last night I found a post that indicated that bitlocker would make a 300 meg partition (100 for itself, 200 for oem utilities). That got me thinking. Today I decided to shrink my system partition and leave some unpartitioned space on the drive in case it was trying to make this partition. That's when things changed. Suddenly bitlocker started working properly. I still only see the 100 meg windows partition, but maybe there is another hidden partition that it was unable to create because I had given all the space to my system drive. I left 500 megs unpartitioned, enabled bitlocker and it's working fine. For me, problem solved.


    Hope this helps someone. One nice thing about Win7 is that it allows you to shrink/expand volumns right from disk management so no playing around with PE boot disks.
      My Computer


 

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