Bitlocker - Lock an Unlocked Drive

How to Lock an Unlocked BitLocker Drive​

Currently, if you unlock a drive that has been locked with Bitlocker, you will need to either restart explorer.exe or reboot your PC. Neither of these appeal to me so I found a way of adding "Lock" to the context menu menu which, when clicked, re-locks the drive.

   Warning

Involves editing the registry. Proceed with care if new to registry editing and back up your registry before hand

Here's How:
1. Open Notepad and paste this below in it.
NOTE: Replace x: with the drive letter you wish to apply it to.
manage-bde -lock x: -ForceDismount
2. Save the file as lock.bat to your desktop, then move it into your C:\Windows folder.

3. Open regedit and navigate to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell

4. In the left pane of regedit, right click on shell, click on New and Key, type runas, and press enter.
NOTE: This key may already exist with the value of TakeOwnership. If it does, name the new key runas(2) instead.

5. In the right pane of runas or runas(2), double click on (default) to modify, type in Lock and click on OK.

6. In the left pane of regedit, right click on runas or runas(2), click on New and Key, type command and press enter.

7. In the right pane of command, double click on (default) to modify, type in C:\Windows\lock.bat and click on OK.

8. In the right pane of runas or runas(2), click on a empty space and click on New and String Value, type in AppliesTo and press enter.

9. Double click on AppliesTo to modify, type in X: and click on OK.
NOTE: Replace X: with the same drive location as you did in step 1.

10. Close regedit.
Now, when you right click the drive, you'll see "Lock". Clicking this will re-lock your drive.

Micrsoft needs to fix this IMO but this is an excellent work around. Props to "Jonathon" for coming up with the original method.

Related Tutorials

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• Add "Lock Drive" to Unlocked BitLocker Drives Context Menu in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Unlock a Data or Removable Drive Locked by BitLocker Drive Encryption
• How to Turn Windows 7 BitLocker To Go On or Off for Removable Drives
• How to Change Windows 7 BitLocker Drive Encryption Method and Cipher Strength
• How to Suspend or Resume BitLocker Protection on Windows 7 Drive
• How to Turn Windows 7 BitLocker On or Off for Internal Data Hard Drives
• How to Create a Windows 7 BitLocker Drive Encryption Shortcut
• How to Turn BitLocker On or Off without a TPM for Windows 7 Drive
• How to Check BitLocker Status of Drive in Windows 7 and Windows 8

 

[Brink]

Hello Amarnath, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Please post some screenshots showing this and what you are doing. This will better help us see what may be wrong. Be sure that you are using the correct drive letter in place of X in the commands for the BitLocker drive that you are wanting to lock.

 

[4wd]

Some suggestions that may be useful:

Alt 1:
In Notepad
manage-bde x: -lock
replace x with the actual drive letter. Save as whatever.bat
Move the bat file to wherever you want to store it, then make a shortcut to it, placed wherever you want to run it from. Before 1st use: right-click shortcut > Properties > Advanced > Run as administrator > OK

Alt 2:
BitLocker Drives Unlocker [AddictiveTips Apps]
Does 'lock all' for those with several drives, and 'unlock all' if PW is the same. Somewhat sketchy program (cannot even be minimized), pinning it to taskbar helps. Has been working fine here.