This morning, I turned on my HP Omen PC and saw a BIOS prompt about my drive. I'm not sure exactly what it said, but it mentioned something about either keeping or wiping the drive because of a problem. I chose to keep it, and that's when BitLocker came up requiring a key. However, the key I used previously is being rejected now. The only recent change I made to my hardware was the installation of a new 4TB SSD about a week or two ago. I've already reached out to HP support, but since my warranty is expired, they want $49 for help, which I'm not keen on paying.
4 Answers
Be careful, the latest Windows 11 update can sometimes lock SSDs or, in the worst cases, completely break them.
You could boot from a live OS like Ubuntu. When it prompts for the BitLocker key while accessing your drive, if the key works there, backup your data and then reinstall Windows. If that fails, there may not be much else to try.
How can I boot into a live OS if I can't get past BitLocker?
So here's a quick update: when I installed the new SSD, I didn't have a heat sink, so I swapped my old SSD and the new one around to use both. I didn’t realize that would cause issues. I’ll try switching them back to their original places and see if that works!
Update: Moving the SSDs back didn’t resolve the issue. I’m really stumped and don’t have a USB to fresh install Windows.
Check your Microsoft account to see if there’s a new BitLocker key available. If that doesn't work, you might want to consider reinstalling Windows. Did you reinstall the OS after you installed the new SSD?
There's no new key in my account, and I'm not sure how to reinstall Windows without a USB. Plus, I didn’t reinstall Windows after adding the new SSD.
That’s actually what happened before—the last update didn’t install correctly, and now BitLocker has locked me out.