yes , lenovo is going to cause havic for newbs, Microsoft only puts it on Pro for a reason, becuase home users do not have valuable data so there is no need for it, but lenovo is more of a business brand so i can see their point. to force it on Home users. they need to have a screen pop up with more information to educate you when you 1st turn on the computer i agree, i was interested in the forum becuse i work for microsoft and i know Home does not have it, you have to add it with 3rd party tools
Bitlocker enabled itself on Windows 10 Home edition without a notice and without permission
After three years of owning a Dell Inspiron 13 (Windows Home) the computer somehow enabled Bitlocker on its own and encrypted my C: drive. Since I did not activate Bitlocker, I don't have the keys to decrypt the drive. My Microsoft account does not list any keys in it so there is no way to recover the keys as far as I know. Therefore none of the published solutions I have seen can work because they all assume that I have access to the keys. I see many similar complaints online (at least since 2018) and hundreds of "likes" so this appears to be a relatively common problem.
When booting, I see a message titled "BitLocker recovery" and it asks for the recovery key. It then says to "try your work or school account at: aka.ms/aadrecoverykey."
This suggests that the key may be associated with some active directory domain away from my computer. However, the admin account on this computer has, to my knowledge, never logged into an active directory domain, although non-admin users have. And, if the Amin account has connected to a Active Directory somewhere, I sure as heck did not give them a permission to encrypt my drive and lock me out of my computer, and give the key to some third party "work or school" account. If this is what happened, Microsoft, you have a serious security issue where third parties can effectively encrypt hard drives without permission using Microsoft's own tools. That is ransomware - without the ransom. But, this is still just a theory vaguely supported by this link https://hardsoft-support.kayako.com/article/99-windows-10-bitlocker-turns-on-without-a-notice
Here is a quote from the post: "Dell and Lenovo systems that ship with the Windows 10 operating system and are equipped with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) capability will have Microsoft BitLocker encryption enabled from the factory. It has been found that once the device is registered to a Active Directory domain - Office 365 Azure AD, Windows 10 automatically encrypts the system drive. You find this once you reboot your computer and are then prompted for the BitLocker key."
Since I don't know what possible organization could have encrypted the drive, and since I don't have admin access to them, the instructions in the article don't apply.
The laptop is Dell Inspiron 13 7370 - which I don't even think has a TPM chip built in it. BIOS is version 1.20.0. ePSA build is 4306.13 UEFI ROM.
So, Microsoft, how does this get fixed?
P.S. My other computers have Win10 Pro and and they have Bitlocker turned on, but this computer intentionally did not have Bitlocker turned on - and it was not supposed to be possible to turn on bitlocker on a Win10 Home edition. I am mentioning this to highlight that I did not "accidentally" trigger the Bitlocker being turned on - especially because it requires many steps and confirmations. The drive was simply encrypted one day with permission from me.
Windows for home | Windows 10 | Security and privacy
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Anonymous
2023-10-04T19:22:32+00:00 -
Anonymous
2023-10-04T19:15:50+00:00 in the BIOS >> Security page are options for this, i read, contact lenovo for further information, or check your user manual , becasuse now this has nothing to do with Microsoft, microsoft only supports it on pro, so this is on via 3rd party method, , all my Lenovo computers came with pro, so im learning on this myself, but i see what they have done,
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Neil D 34,285 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2023-10-04T19:11:47+00:00 I've just realised I should be signed in with an administrator account to see the option to remove Device encryption
but as I said I don't want to turn it off.
There are obviously ways to remove it but if Device encryption is enabled the average user won't know until it's too late. This is why I think they should be made to make users aware of the need to save the 48 digit recovery key.
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Anonymous
2023-10-04T19:11:03+00:00 ok, i googled (Lenovo device encryption windows 11 home, ) lots of forums,
so this must be a lenovo thing in the firmware or an update they push, , becuase windows home does not have it by itself, so moving forward, i see solutions , on how to remove it by resetting bios, there would be no option in windows to manage it , becasue its not coming from windows, its Lenovo, so your options are , remove it with bios methods in the forms i read, reset defaults etc, but there will be no option in windows to manage it unless you upgrade to Pro. Bitlocker-suddenly-activated-on-Win11-Home - English Community - LENOVO COMMUNITY
Cheers!