Actualy remove bitlocker entirely, not disable

[greengrower]

Hi,

i was hoping somebody could help me with removing bitlocker from windows?

i dont want to decrypt a drive, or stop bitlocker monitoring my drives because this wont actualy solve my problem. i actually want bitlocker to be removed and no longer exist as part of my operating system. i want it to die and burn in a fire of digital petrol

i'm not sure if its even possible really, i dont know how difficult or how important bitlocker is to the operating system itself when its not encrypting drives.

any ideas? if it cant be removed then i would be happy to just break it. delete a certain file that it relies on so when it tries to start up it just gives a windows error which i can cancel perhaps?

thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Barman58]

Best I can offer is the Bitlocker service is set to manual by default which means that it will be started if required. You could set this to disabled which should prevent it ever running.

   Warning

Please note that if you disable the service the encryption will remain on any areas that are encrypted, and could actually corrupt the encryption making it impossible to recover data. With this in mind I would strongly advise against doing this, or at a minimum make sure that there are no encrypted files in use prior to any changes

 

[greengrower]

i did unfortunately try setting it to manual a month or so ago but it doesnt seem to have done the trick. despite being set as manual and it not actualy running when looking at services - i plugged in my memory stick and bitlocker prompted to encrypt it.

disabling bitlocker (in my situation) wont actualy stop it from running or attempting to encrypt my drives. because of bitlocker im not able to copy files to my removable flash drives without encrypting them which is a real pain

 

[Barman58]

If you disable the service and re-boot the system, you should not see any prompts generated, as stated the Manual option will allow the service to start if and when requested, which I believe is the default action for inserting a USB stick

 

[greengrower]

Hi,

i've disabled bitlocker and restarted my PC which has disabled bitlocker but has also detailed the problem im facing a little further.

with bitlocker disabled i assumed i would be able to copy things to my removable drives, however....

im attaching my removable drive, i do not get prompted by bitlocker anymore which proves that its no longer running or monitoring my drives. when i try to copy a file to my drives it tells me that the disk is write protected. i know for a fact that none of them are write protected (my ipod nano and android memory card - note that ive tried connecting my memory via the phone cable and via a card reader)

my assumption is that the settings on the PC basicly say - is this drive encrypted by bitlocker? no? make drive read only... nothing under the drive properties suggests the drive is read only and if i unplugged it and connected it to another (non work) PC it wouldnt suffer any problems. so the actions being carried out to make the drive read only is below the standard windows interface. perhaps its something i could change in the registry?

apart from personal use, this is also very beneficial to my colleagues and most of the building. our office and the company we work for are 2 very different things and alot of the policies that work for the overall company are a general pain for our office and overall make life harder than it needs to be. being able to copy files to removable drives without encrypting could save valuable time when trying to fix a server or move media files around the office or off the network.

apologies for being indirect about the actual cause of the problem but some forums immediately respond with "oh thats naughty we arent helping you - Thread Closed"

 

[Barman58]

If you are dealing with a "work" PC then the only way you will be able to get around this issue is to talk to your System Administrator

This is not a Bitlocker issue but merely the protection systems put in place by the owner of the system working correctly, as designed. In order to protect the companies data there are restrictions as to what can be copied and where, this is perfectly understandable and we cannot consider any attempt to circumvent this.

If you find that there are genuine reasons that this policy should be changed then this must be a matter between you and your company. I am afraid to say that "personal use" is not a valid reason

 

[greengrower]

not to worry, atleast im a little further to narrowing things down.

im sure ill find some way around it eventualy

thanks for your time

 

[TriOSGaming]

It's very dangerous to delete BitLocker. It runs on svchost.exe . Now, this may not say anything big for you, but it is. If you go to Services.msc and see the service for it BitLocker's execution comes from svchost. "C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs". svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries. If you delete it, multiple services will go down. You can try to delete it via command line "sc delete BDESVC" but you need access, which isn't even able to via Administrator elevation. Try taking ownership of svchost.exe. Mind you, it is extremely dangerous. If you attempt, make a Restore Point first.

 

[MoxieMomma]

Hello and welcome, @TriOSGaming:

You wrote:

It's very dangerous to delete BitLocker. It runs on svchost.exe . Now, this may not say anything big for you, but it is. If you go to Services.msc and see the service for it BitLocker's execution comes from svchost. "C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs". svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries. If you delete it, multiple services will go down. You can try to delete it via command line "sc delete BDESVC" but you need access, which isn't even able to via Administrator elevation. Try taking ownership of svchost.exe. Mind you, it is extremely dangerous. If you attempt, make a Restore Point first.

The last post in this thread was nearly 5 years ago.
Moreover, as the OP was banned for violating forum rules, I suspect he's no longer following it...

Cheers,
MM