Restoring HP pavilion

[CaroGrizzy]

When I opened my laptop a blue screen asking for a BitLock recovery key popped up. I don’t remember ever having had/created a bitlock recovery key. My Microsoft account is linked to my device but it says that there are no recover key for this device. After a fair amount of searching I could not find a recovery key. I tried to recover the laptop (I don’t need any of the files on there as I have everything saved up somewhere else) but it is failing to recover. Can anyone help?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Your only option to get your notebook running again when you do not have the Bitlocker recovery key would be to clean install Windows on the drive.

Use the media creation tool for W10 or W11 to create a bootable installation flash drive.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

Download Windows 11 (microsoft.com)

When you get to the part of the installation that asks, 'Where do you want to install Windows,' delete every partition on the drive, leaving just one partition of unallocated space.  Click Next and Windows should install.

After the installation is complete, you can download the drivers and available software from your notebook's support page.

It's good that you have your files saved off the PC, because you will never be able to recover them.

In the future if you do not use Bitlocker to encrypt the drive, periodically make sure that Bitlocker is turned off.

If there is an open padlock icon on your Windows drive, Bitlocker is enabled.

I don't know how or why, but sometimes it just turns itself on.

How to Turn Off BitLocker on Windows 10 and 11: 4 Easy Ways (wikihow.com)

[CaroGrizzy]

Thank you, that’s helpful. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Bitlocker had turned itself on in my notebook, and I caught it, about a year or so after I had turned it off.

When I first got the notebook, and set it up, I was prompted to export the Bitlocker recovery key to my Microsoft account.

Being new to this stuff at the time, I made the wise decision to do so.

Windows update automatically sent me a BIOS update and after the update was completed, I was greeted with the same screen you were.

Bear in mind I hadn't owned this notebook for an hour yet!

So, I went into my Microsoft account, got the key entered it and was able to access the PC.

I also saved the key as a text file and have it stored with other files on a portable hard drive, just in case.

I thereupon promptly turned Bitlocker off after getting back into Windows.