Tip: remove partially installed bitlocker
From
T@T@invalid.invalid to
alt.comp.os.windows-11 on Wed May 6 12:37:03 2026
From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11
Hi All,
Configured a new Lenovo computer for a customer
yesterday. He likes Brave Browser, so he installed
it before I got to it.
He wanted his old Brave profile installed from his
old computer with all his old accounts and passwords.
Problem: "Blink" browsers (Edge, Chrome, Chromium,
Brave, Vivaldi, etc.) use a particular pernicious
file lock on their "Default" sub-directory, so you
can not erase it and start over from backup.
Well, not from Windows, but you can erase it from
a Linux Live USB (and I have lots of them!).
When I went to mount his C: drive in Linux, I got
told that it was encrypted with Bitlocker. So no mount.
Turn out his C: drive was 16% encrypted with Bitlockler.
And it can be fixed from the Windows side. So I
decrypted it in Windows, booted back into Linux, erase
his new Brave Profile, then replaced it with his
old profile from backup. Happy camping returned.
You know I am not going to have any hair left by
the time I retire!
HTH someone else,
-T
So here is the tip:
How to decrypt a partially or fully Bitlocker encrypted drive
from the Command Prompt
[1] Open Command Prompt as Administrator.
[2] Run this command to disable BitLocker:
manage-bde -off C:
C: or the drive in question
[3] Wait for the decryption to complete. This may take a few minutes.
Verify the status with:
manage-bde -status C:
You have to repeat it until it says finished.
A sample finished status:
Volume C: [Windows]
[OS Volume]
Size: 474.53 GB
BitLocker Version: 2.0
Conversion Status: Decryption in Progress
Percentage Encrypted: 16.6%
Encryption Method: XTS-AES 128
Protection Status: Protection Off
Lock Status: Unlocked
Identification Field: Unknown
Key Protectors: None Found
"Percentage Encrypted" will count down each time you run
manage-bde -status C:
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