Bitlocker randomly prompts for recovery key on HP Elitebook 840 G3

[JiggleMan]

Greetings,

I am having issues with Windows 10 Bitlocker on our Elitebook 840 (G2,G3) notebooks. Every couple weeks, the notebooks will  prompt for the Bitlocker recovery key. This causes alot of trouble, as we have users who travel and work remotely.  

We have other brands of notebooks deployed with similar specs. We are rarely prompted for Bitlocker recovery keys on those notebooks. 

Has anyone else experienced these issues with Bitlocker on HP Elitebook 840 (or similar) notebooks?

Thanks, 

Bill

[IT_WinSec]

Hi @JiggleMan

Thank you for posting in the HP Support forum.

I used to work for HP/HPE in a cyber security team and I used to support encryption software from various vendors including Microsoft' Bitlocker. Most of our customers' machines were running HP business class computers. Personally, I am not aware of any issues with these Elitebooks and Bitlocker.

What you see actually is common issue with BitLocker that can happen on any kind of PC. It is so common that when you go to a job interview for IT related job in the security support, you will often be asked how to handle this sitatuon. Here is the solution when BitLocker starts asking for a recovery key often:

When asked for the key and after entering it,

1.  Suspend Bitlocker. Via CMD or via GUI. Here is how >> https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/38508-suspend-resume-bitlocker-protection-drive-windows-10-a.htm...

2. Restart the PC

3. Resume the protection of BitLocker

4. Restart again and ensure the protection is really resumed


The issue might be caused by a few things such as:
- hardware changes (I have seen docking stations cause this if a machine is booted while attached or some 3rd party device plugged into during start/boot, anything that effects the windows startup routine and causes the hash to be changed and not match what bitlocker expects)

- virus/malware (rarely)

- some latest faulty Windows Update

Hope this helps.

[IT_WinSec]

The above steps usually work in most cases.

If the above has been performed correctly and the issue persists, next step would be:

- decrypt the drive(s)

- reboot the PC after successful decryption

- re-encrypt the drive(s) - this will generate new key

Hope this helps. Provide reply/feedback and let me know how it goes.

[JiggleMan]

I understand this should happen on occasion, but these computers do this 2-3 times a month.

By comparison, my notebook (different brand, similar specs) has had bitlocker enabled for over a year, and I haven't been prompted for a recovery key once. And I definately change hardware more often then these end users. 

I think I found a work around though. The last time this happened, i noticed Windows 10 downloaded and installed an update for the synaptics fingerprint scanner. I disabled the fingerprint scanner in the BIOS and haven't had a problem since. It will take a month or two to determine if this resolved the issue completely.

[TryToDoMybest]

hello

nice to know that the finger print reader driver might cause this .

Windows 10 continuosly update the drivers via Windows Update, so it happens frequently.

Please update this post in case you will not get the issue anymore.

thanks

bye