Encrypted drive no longer shows decrypt authentication screen on startup

[Spotpal]

HOW ENCRYPTION USED TO WORK:

A couple of months ago I enabled HP Drive Encryption on my laptop. It all worked fine: when I booted the laptop I would briefly see the HP logo, followed by the HP Drive Encryption login screen. I would then enter my password to decrypt the drive. After that I would see GRUB from where I could pick an OS to boot.

WHAT I DID TO BREAK ENCRYPTION:

This laptop is dual boot (Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 7). It has been dual boot long before I enabled drive encryption. But recently I did an Ubuntu update. During this update I vaguely remember it asking me to select a setting for GRUB (the bootloader that I use since I have dual boot). (It might not have mentioned something about GRUB, it could have been something similar (BIOS related). I'm sorry I don't remember.)

HOW ENCRYPTION IS NOW BROKEN:
After this Ubuntu update when I restarted the laptop, it would show me the HP logo (just like before), but then it would skip the HP Drive Encryption login screen and go straight to the GRUB bootloader.

From there if I would try to start Windows 7, it would go into repair mode. This is obvious since the drive was never decrypted.

WHAT I TRIED SO FAR:

• I have tried changing the active partition on the laptop's hard drive. (I extracted the hard drive from the laptop and used a docking station to view it from another computer. After that I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to set another partition to active. I would then insert the hard drive back into the laptop to boot it.) The laptop would still boot but would not show me the decrypt authentication screen.
• I have also tried to fix the issue by booting the laptop via an USB on which I burned the SDWinPEx64.iso file. From there I would run TBLauncher.exe, but none of the drives showed up as locked in this tool. I tried to fix the drives not showing up as locked by using SDWmgRecovery.exe. But this tool requires there to be an WinMagicSECURDOC.WMG file on the hard drive, which I couldn't find (and I don't there there ever was one).
• On top of that I tried changing many settings in the BIOS, but nothing seemed to help.

OTHER INFO:

I still know the password that I used when I would decrypt the drive. I also still have a .dat file that I had to make when setting up drive encryption. I assume this file contains a recovery key for when I would forget the password.

I hope someone can help me out. If you need more info then please tell me.

[Spotpal]

I think this post is related: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-Notebooks/Restore-HP-drive-encrypt-boot-loader/td-p/5632317
If I can restore the bootloader used by HP Drive Encryption (which I assume existed and got removed/overwritten), then that should fix the issue.

This issue might also be related: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Archive-Read-Only/Repair-Windows-start-up-on-encrypted-Lapto...

Same for this one: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/HOW-TO-DECRYPT-PREBOOT-HDD-WITH...

[Spotpal]

Just found out about the DiskTech2011 and 2012 iso files. You can find them (including instruction/documentation files) here: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/TCE&Q
According to the documentation these iso's can be used to retrieve data encrypted with 2011/2012 Drive Encryption for ProtectTools.

This seems very promising, but the current problem I'm having is that I can't make a bootable USB or CD using any of the two iso files.

When trying to make a bootable USB using Rufus it says: "The ISO file you have selected does not match its declared size: 89.0 MB of data is missing!". And when I dismiss that warning and continue it will pop an error lateron.

When trying to burn to a CD it says: "The selected disc image file isn't valid."

[Spotpal]

Update: when downloading the DiskTech2012 iso for the fourth (!) time, I was finally able to get the entire file.

The other 3 downloads were just cut off for some reason.

I was able to boot using the USB containing the DiskTech2012 iso. From there I could select 'McAfee Tools > McAfee EETech for HPPT v7'.
I then pressed 'Authenticate'. and located my recovery .dat file located on a second USB. This seemed to be successful as the 'Authentication Status' changed to: 'Authenticated with File'.

The 'Deactivate encryption' button was now no longer grayed out, so I pressed it and selected 'Use Win7 mbr'. I pressed the 'Remove' button to start the process.

But this gave me the following error: "Error EE020006 Endpoint Encryption Disk information not present".

[Spotpal · Accepted solution]

Was able to decrypt and view the drive contents using the DiskTech2011.iso (instead of the 2012 one which didn't work). Yay!!

For others: in order to get DiskTech2011 to work from a bootable USB, I had to switch the drive controller to IDE mode (you can do this by pressing F10 during startup when you see the HP logo, then go to System Configuration>Device Configuration>SATA Device Mode). This is also described in the documentation for DiskTech2011 on the FTP server I linked to before.

Don't forgot to set it back to the old device mode when you're done.

[Ground-89]

I have a similar problem with disk encryption, but this solution did not help me!
I upgraded to Windows 10 and did not decrypt d:\ drive before installation.

What I have:
HP ProBook 4540s
Restored Windows 7 x64 (from Acronis image) - C:  drive loads and works without errors. Login is possible by password and fingerprint.
The original HP Drive Encryption ver.7.0.41.36204 did not detect an encrypted drive (Status: Not Encrypted).
There is an encryption key.
  I have an encrypted drive partition D.

Same problem:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebooks-Archive-Read-Only/Encrypted-Hard-Drive-and-Corrupted-Windows...

Are there any decryption applications?

[AndreN2]

Similar problem. Tools works, system boots from the CD with dischtech2011.iso. I´ve the password, that was used when encrypting HDD, but I´ve not a backup encryption key (.dat on usb). Is there any possiblity to run? There´s no window to write the PW in the application. thanks.