I'm having trouble unlocking a drive that's encrypted with BitLocker on a client's laptop, which unfortunately died. They had most of their data backed up, but there are a couple of folders we really need. We connected the drive to a Windows 11 Pro 24H2 machine, which is fully updated, but upon trying to unlock the drive, it gives an error that says:
"The BitLocker Encryption on this drive isn't compatible with your version of Windows. Try opening the drive using a newer version of Windows."
When I run 'bde-manage -status', the results show unknown size, no BitLocker version, and an error stating, "An Error Occurred (code 0x80070057), the parameter is incorrect." I think the laptop was running Windows 11 Pro 21H2 before it died.
I've also tried unlocking it via the command line using the recovery key from the Azure portal, but that hasn't worked either. Is there any special trick or method to get this drive unlocked? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
You might want to try accessing the drive offline using DART or a WinPE with the BitLocker add-on. From there, you could use Robocopy to transfer any recoverable data to another drive.
There’s a chance the drive itself has become corrupt. If it shows a BitLocker icon in Windows, that’s a good sign, but it could still have underlying corruption problems.
That’s my concern too! One little glitch in encryption can sometimes make data recovery practically impossible.
You might want to check out the Microsoft documentation linked here. It could give you some guidance on troubleshooting BitLocker compatibility issues: [Microsoft BitLocker Guide](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-7/ee523219(v=ws.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN)
How would we confirm whether it's corrupted or not?