Windows 11 Home, Local account, both my C and D drives (separate ssds) marked as 'encrypted by bitlocker' out of the blue
Bought my laptop on january, it came with Windows 11 21H2 (got prompted to update to 22H2 later the same day) and some proprietary bloatware. I set it up skipping ms account as usual, remove some crap, install my stuff and copy my backups, no issue.
Used it until today.
I recently installed a second ssd on the other m2 slot the laptop had and used it as a data disk.
I also made a small partition on it with Hiren's boot in case I need to back stuff up and windows fails, that partition, I didn't give it a letter so it doesn't appear in explorer.
Fast forward today, I did a clean install, allegedly according to microsoft website topics, "a factory reset", I selected "delete everything" and "wipe the drive windows is installed in" like they said.
It really wasn't a factory reset since 22H2 was installed from the beginning, and a lot of the oem crapware didn't get installed. Welp no biggie.
Second ssd wasn't touched, but windows gave a letter to the other partition i purposedly had hidden welp no biggie again I went on disk management and removed the letter problem solved.
Set up local account again of course.
Installed all updates (including May's that I was postponing on my previous install) and put my programs and files back in.
I was finished few minutes ago and for some reason I opened disk management and I saw it.
Both my C and D drives (separate physical drives, the second one being NOT A WINDOWS SYSTEM DISK) are marked as 'encrypted by bitlocker'
Of course I got goosebumps when I saw that, since the last thing I want is to get locked out of my own pc.
After some research I discovered the option to decrypt the drives and it did so without asking for any password or key thank god.
Now I checked on disk management and cmd and the disks are now unlocked and not marked as encrypted anymore.
That said...what the actual f
- Bitlocker is supposed to be Pro only, I have Windows Home
- Drive Encryption in general is supposed to be only when you log into a MS account, but I bypassed that in the OOBE with a@a.com plus gibberish password and I am definitely a local account
- Encryption is supposed to only affect the C drive trustmebro it doesn't support non os drives, but Windows encrypted my D as well
And now I am still worried.
It seems like I disabled it, but is it really?
Also now that I disabled it will it reactivate on its own down the line/tomorrow/next reboot/next update? I dread that possibility.
I just want to use my pc with no worries..
How do I make sure that #@&# never tries to encrypt my drives ever again?..
Posted Jun 2, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC