Bitlocker enabled drive recovery.

[LongBow25]

My friend was given an old laptop and it has a bitlocker on it. No one seems to know what the key is or how to get it. There are no important files on the drive so I tried to install a fresh windows with the installation media tool, but the tool did not see the drive. What are the next options for restoring the drive.

[RiffTheRaff]

Please give us the hardware spec? Which laptop is it. Maybe the drive needs some drivers for install.

[LongBow25]

19 hours ago, RiffTheRaff said:

Please give us the hardware spec? Which laptop is it. Maybe the drive needs some drivers for install.

I do not know the hardware specs because I can not get into the laptop. None of the files are important, so we want to just wipe the drive. But, Windows media installation tool can't see or access the drive because of the bitlocker.

[RiffTheRaff]

Is there no sticker on the laptop with some kind of model and manufacturer?

[Murasaki]

BIOS may have an option to secure erase media so you could try that.

[LongBow25]

46 minutes ago, Murasaki said:

BIOS may have an option to secure erase media so you could try that.

It doesn't.

[LongBow25]

1 hour ago, RiffTheRaff said:

Is there no sticker on the laptop with some kind of model and manufacturer?

This seems to be it.HP Laptop 15-dy2024nr Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

 

[RiffTheRaff]

This leads me to following support site: HP Laptop PC 15s-fq2000 (2D119AV) Software and Driver Downloads | HP® Customer Support

Download the driver for "Driver-Storate" - "Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver".

Use the manual download link and store the file "sp139242.exe" to your PC. 

Use a tool like 7-Zip to extract the exe content.

Copy the extracted content to your windows installation media or a second USB stick format with FAT32.

Select the extracted folder when windows asks for additional drivers while setup.

 

I think it should show "Intel RST VMD Controller 9A0B" when you select the "sp139242\dchu_VMD" folder.

After that it should list your disk hopefully.

 

This guide from dell Intel Prozessoren der 11. und 12. Generation, während der Installation von Windows 10 und Windows 11 können keine Laufwerke gefunden werden | Dell Österreich describes it best but use drivers from HP

 

 

[RiffTheRaff]

On some Laptops it is possible to diable VMD in BIOS and then no driver is need to detect the drive while windows installation.

[LongBow25]

On 1/20/2023 at 3:35 PM, RiffTheRaff said:

On some Laptops it is possible to diable VMD in BIOS and then no driver is need to detect the drive while windows installation.

So I got the Bitlocker off and reformatted the drive, but now the windows media install tool can't see the drive in the laptop. Any ideas why?

[RiffTheRaff]

Have you loaded the drivers for your controller?

[LongBow25]

13 hours ago, RiffTheRaff said:

Have you loaded the drivers for your controller?

we tried that. 

[RiffTheRaff]

Can you press SHIFT+F10 when your at the dialog where drive should by displayed.

This should open a cmd.exe.

Please run following command and make a picture:

wmic path CIM_LogicalDevice where "status != 'OK'" get deviceId, description, status

 

The output should look like this:

 

The list should contain all devices without a working driver. Maybe we can identify the missing driver by vendor ID and device ID.

Ex. VEN_1002&DEV_67DF is a AMD Radeon RX 580

[LongBow25]

On 1/26/2023 at 11:49 PM, Irina Upadhyay said:

Hi
There is just one way to reformat the drive if you can't remember your bitlocker password. When you need to decrypt a BitLocker-encrypted disc without a password, there is no way to get around the recovery key. To disable the encryption, you can reformat the disc, which doesn't require a password or recovery key.

I reformatted the drive, but now it won't show up when I try to reinstall Windows.