Installing fresh win 11 on a laptop with bitlocker disk and no unlock keys

Topic

Hi. One of my customers has given me a win 11 lenovo ideapad laptop that has become surplus to their requirements. unfortunately the disk has bitlocker enabled and they have no idea of the unlock code. They do not have access to the relevant ms account either as it was part of the small business that they sold and so the email domain is no longer accessible.

i foolishly said that yes, i could wipe it and reinstall windows 11 afresh.

there is no data on the disk that any of us care about, it can be wiped.

but when i boot from the win 11 24h2 usb i created, it cannot see the c: drive disk at all in its list of disks. the list only contains the bootable usb disk.

is there a way (eg by loading a driver?) to make the c: drive visible so i can install windows 11 onto it?

do i need to somehow disable bitlocker first? I have attempted to do so but so far with no success.

Any suggestions?  TIA.

Replies

Windows boot disks have lots of drivers built-in to allow them to see disks on most machines. You may have one of those odd ones that have an odd driver.

Try creating a recovery USB from the instructions on this page: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht103653-lenovo-digital-download-recovery-service-ddrs-download-the-files-needed-to-create-a-lenovo-usb-recovery-key

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

kempware

Paul,

thank you for that link.

i have used and supported Lenovo products for years but i’ve never needed to download an original factory install image. it was not a smooth process on Lenovo’s behalf, a few bugs, mis-steps etc before i finally got a good image on bootable usb… but the end result is….

it worked!

it reinstalled factory win 10, including removing all traces of bitlocker, then immediately offered a win 11 upgrade.  isn’t tech wonderful when it works!

I am a happy techo again, thankyou for suggesting this technique.

peter

all good now  🙂