Bitlocker installation?

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Guest

I have been trying to install Bitlocker all day. I have had up to 3
partitions on my hard drive and a formatted USB drive attached to my pc and
cannot even get to where I can turn on Bitlocker. I have enabled Bitlocker
to work without TPM. Every time I go to the Bitlocker screen, my only option
is to "Set up hard drives to run Bitlocker" (or whatever the exact wording
is).

What am I doing wrong?
 
I wish I had better advise than this: don't know. It took me about 4 tries
to get BitLocker working. I would have to assume that you've tried more than
4 times if you've been pounding on it all day... and I am using TPM, so
don't know if that makes a difference... good luck. For real.

Lang
 
Hi,

I guess you performed the Windows Bitlocker as per the guide,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx

Did you check for the group policy option, to enable to Allow BitLocker
without a compatible TPM ?

abc.

Lang Murphy said:
I wish I had better advise than this: don't know. It took me about 4 tries
to get BitLocker working. I would have to assume that you've tried more than
4 times if you've been pounding on it all day... and I am using TPM, so
don't know if that makes a difference... good luck. For real.

Lang
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for your reponses so far.

Yes, I have gone through the "Step by step" guide and made multiple
partitions and allowed Bitlocker to run despite the lack of TPM on this PC
probably about 7 or so times now. Like I said earlier, I have at least 2
partitions on my drive and a USB drive and have even tried setting up 4
partitions and still every time I go to the Bitlocker screen, I get the same
link that says "Set up your hard drive to run Bitlocker"

This is the one feature I really want to check out before I decide on Vista
and at the moment, it's a big pain in the butt apparently.
--
Thanks for your help!
Ben


abckid said:
Hi,

I guess you performed the Windows Bitlocker as per the guide,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx

Did you check for the group policy option, to enable to Allow BitLocker
without a compatible TPM ?

abc.
Click to expand...
 
Hi Ben,
Please open "Disk Management":
Click on Start button
Right-click on "Computer" and click "Manage" to open "Computer Management"
Under the "Storage" heading, click "Disk Management"
Look under the "Status" column of all the disks, identify which disk says
"System", and which says "Boot"
The "System" and "Boot" volumes must be different volumes. If they are the
same volume, this will cause the error you are seeing.
The "System" volume must show as "Active", "Primary Partition" with the
"NTFS" File System. If this is not the case, you will get the error you are
seeing.
The "Boot" volume must show "Page File", "Crash Dump" with the "NTFS" File
System. This is most likely correct.

Please let me know what your findings are. Also let me know if you've
installed an additional OS after installing Vista.

Thanks!
 
The boot files cannot be on the same partition as the operating system for
the obvious reason that you cannot encrypt the loader.

If you have the boot files on the same partition as the operating system,
move them to a different partition and make that partition the active
partition. Simple way to get it working is boot the DVD in console prompt.
If you Vista install is on C: (first partition on the first drive), then you
could put the boot files on D: (2nd partition on the first drive). From the
console prompt, you'd just type in:
X:>xcopy c:\bootmgr d:\bootmgr /h /k
X:>xcopy c:\boot d:\boot /e /h /k /y

This will copy the files. You then used diskpart to make D: the active
partition:
X:>diskpart
select disk 0
select partition 2
active
exit
Click to expand...


Finally, you use bcdedit to change the bcd:
X:>bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=D:

Reboot, and you should be gold. I've done this a lot of times already
without any issues.

Other than that, I have run into the problem where BitLocker can't find the
encryption key on the USB thumbdrive. If you get that error, before
rebooting, open up a command prompt and change the attributes of the key
file so that it isn't hiddden.
 
Hope all the system builders get the word so they create their systems to
accomodate this requirement. Most consumers aren't going to be able to do
this and will at the least have to purchase a third party partitioning
product.


Roberto Baggio said:
The boot files cannot be on the same partition as the operating system for
the obvious reason that you cannot encrypt the loader.

If you have the boot files on the same partition as the operating system,
move them to a different partition and make that partition the active
partition. Simple way to get it working is boot the DVD in console
prompt. If you Vista install is on C: (first partition on the first
drive), then you could put the boot files on D: (2nd partition on the
first drive). From the console prompt, you'd just type in:
X:>xcopy c:\bootmgr d:\bootmgr /h /k
X:>xcopy c:\boot d:\boot /e /h /k /y

This will copy the files. You then used diskpart to make D: the active
partition:
X:>diskpart
select disk 0
select partition 2
active
exit
Click to expand...


Finally, you use bcdedit to change the bcd:
X:>bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=D:

Reboot, and you should be gold. I've done this a lot of times already
without any issues.

Other than that, I have run into the problem where BitLocker can't find
the encryption key on the USB thumbdrive. If you get that error, before
rebooting, open up a command prompt and change the attributes of the key
file so that it isn't hiddden.
Click to expand...
 
No 3rd party partitioning product required. If the user creates a single
volume on their hard disk, they can still use diskpart to shrink the volume
and create a second volume for the boot files. :-)
 
With only one volume, the volume will be the system and boot volume, and
according to hundreds of posts, you cannot shrink either.
 
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