Purchased used laptop, installed windows 11, won't boot up and is asking for BitLocker recovery key

[StilBil]

I have an HP Pavilion x360 15.6 inch 2 in 1 laptop. After upgrading from Windows 10 to WIndows 11, the laptop will not boot up to the operating system and is asking for a BitLocker recovery key. The previous owner does not have the key and will not give a refund and take the computer back since it is no longer able to boot to the operating system. I have tried disabling the secure boot in the BIOS and then doing a clean install of Windows 10, the original OS. However, when I get to the screen to select the hard drive or volume to install to, there are no drives or volumes found. Does this mean that the hard drive in the laptop is bad or that it isn't available due to BitLocker? I've read that HP offers a recovery method but am having a difficult time finding out where I can purchase this or if that will get around BitLocker so I can do a clean installation of Windows.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

IMHO, the person that sold you the notebook should have turned off Bitlocker or e-mailed or printed off the Bitlocker recovery key and included it.

I looked up the product specs for the model series and it appears that they come with Intel 11th gen core processors.

If that is correct, see this discussion at the link below for how to get past the 'no drives found' problem.

You can use the driver I posted in the discussion, and it is good for W10/W11.

Solved: Win 10 install not recognizing the NVME - HP Support Community - 8510047

After you install W10/W11, you can use the HP cloud recovery tool to make a bootable USB recovery drive to factory reset the hard drive to its 'out of the box' condition if you want.

Here's an info link for how to use the utility...you will need a 32 GB USB flash drive for this.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool in Windows 11 and 10 | HP® Customer Support

You can download the software from the Microsoft Store.

HP Cloud Recovery Tool - Microsoft Apps