How to fix: Bitlocker Recovery Code WORKS, but pin does NOT - YouTube

Hi, and welcome to this video on Bitlocker.

This video is aimed at people who are having to use the Bitlocker Recovery Code in order

to get into Windows, because Bitlocker will not accept their pin.

I made this video because I suffered with this myself recently,

and was infuriated that the front screen of Bitlocker says nothing about there being an

issue with my pin number,

and yet it will accept the Recovery Code.

I was a bit confused as to why the recovery code was acceptable, but the pin number had,

for some reason, become invalid.

So, for clarity, this video is looking at a scenario where your pin code will NOT work

for Bitlocker, but the Recovery Code DOES work.

On this basis, we have to understand Bitlocker.

You may well be aware that, for security reasons, Bitlocker is designed to be sensitive to both

hardware and configuration changes.

I HAD made a change in my UEFI (often known as your BIOS), in order to boot off a USB

stick.

It turns out that this change was enough to upset Bitlocker such that it was asking for

the Recovery Code and would no longer accept the pin number.

What I have since learned, is that Bitlocker needs manual intervention, once it has determined

that a change has been made, in order to reset its behaviour such that it will accept the

pin number again.

OK, so to fix this issue, we need to suspend the protection on Bitlocker.

I'm going to do this in Windows 8.

In Windows 7, you can simply type "manage bitlocker" into the Start menu, and it will

come up.

You can do the same in Windows 8.

Personally, I prefer to go to the "Drive Tools" within Windows Explorer, choose "Bitlocker",

and choose "Manage Bitlocker".

That will bring up the same screen: the Manage Bitlocker screen.

Within here we can see that the root drive (C drive), has got Bitlocker turned on at

the moment.

Which is why you are getting the prompt at boot time.

You are getting a number of options here.

We don't want to actually turn Bitlocker off, but temporarily we want to suspend protection,

so we're going to choose this option, which needs administration Privileges, as the shield

shows.

So I'm just going to enter administrative privileges.

OK, so having entered my administrator password, I'm being offered the chance to suspend protection,

as I've asked to do.

In-line with what I was saying earlier, this is encouraged if you are going to make changes

to the configuration or hardware itself.

So this should ideally have been done before I caused the issue on my machine.

But there we go.

So if we say "Yes" to that.

We get confirmation that Bitlocker has been suspended.

That basically means we can reboot the machine and make a configuration change, or in my

particular case (and hopefully the case if you're watching this), presumably you've already

done that change, so suspension will get Bitlocker to re-accept the pin going forward.

This first reboot will NOT require a pin, to be clear.

When you get back into Windows, if you go again to the Manage Bitlocker screen.

What you should find is that Bitlocker is then shown turned back on again.

So should turn itself back on when we get back into Windows.

So two reboots time, you should be asked for your pin, and your original pin number should

now be accepted, so you don't need the Recovery Code.

So let's just check that, and do a restart now...

OK, this is the first reboot, so no pin is required.

Windows will now load.

I'm just going to fast forward the video to the next reboot, so I'll go into Windows and

do another shutdown.

This is the system shutting down again.

This is now going to be the second reboot.

and therefore Bitlocker has now re-enabled itself, so we will now expect to be asked

for the pin number.

And this is the pin, as I previously typed, but it should now work, as we've done the

suspension of the protection.

and there we go

The system will now load into Windows, and you shouldn't again be prompted to use the

Recovery Code instead of the pin, as Bitlocker is now happy until it detects any future hardware

or configuration changes.

I hope that helped...

Thanks for watching!