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So, a small amount of backstory. I obtained a secondhand Dell Inspiron laptop some time ago, cleaned up Windows on it, and then gave it to my fiance. She didn't need to use it for a while, and while sitting around the cats knocked the adapter loose and the battery went completely dead. We went to fire it up and use it again, since it had some software and data and it we wanted to access. Well, when it booted it went straight to the screen to unlock the drive through BitLocker. We never configured BitLocker on it. I thought maybe it was cranky due to the bad battery, but even after replacing the battery the issue remained. I'm guessing perhaps with the completely dead battery, and noticing that the system time had reset, that maybe all of the BIOS settings reset and it's throwing off BitLocker.

Well, we managed to get what we needed elsewhere, so this thing being all locked up was only a temporary setback, but we wanted to put it back into use. So I figured that I'd try to just run a system restore from Dell, get it back to factory release. The utility from Dell won't actually run. I installed the utility on three different computers (two running Win 10, one running Win 7), one of which was also a Dell, but for all three the utility would cause the admin pop up to display, and as soon as I clicked ok on it it would close. To be clear, this is the utility that is supposed to create a bootable system restore DVD/USB drive.

So after doing more hunting for solutions, I saw that I should be able to do a repair install of Windows. Seemed great since I have a bootable USB for installing Windows 10. However, all of the instructions pointed to options that were not available. These would be the options that you can get after first "escaping" the first screen asking for the BitLocker password and then clicking "Skip this drive" on the second screen asking for the BitLocker password. I can't recall the exact options that didn't exist for my laptop, nor can I again locate the "tutorials" that didn't match with the available options. Making me wonder if I even saw them in the first place...

Anyway, it seems like the only option left available is to wipe the partition and install from scratch, and that is currently not ideal. I don't have a license key to install, and given that it's an OEM installation of Windows I'd prefer to be able to leave that OEM key in place. As it is, I can't do a repair install to the drive normally because the installer won't allow installation to a BitLocker enabled drive. The main drive also has what appears to be a 13GB recovery partition, but I can't seem to find any way to restore from it.

I'm not really sure what to do here except find a new key for Windows 10, and I'd prefer to not do that if I don't have to.

Michael McCauley
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  • Most people with a lost Encryption key lose the data. – John Nov 14 '23 at 15:21
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    You shouldn't need a license key to do a fresh install. The license is "bound" to the machine hardware and Windows can retrieve and validate it from there without input from you. Regarding BitLocker, have you just disabled/removed it? It could take a while to process drive decryption, but once that's done, it should be fully gone, turned off, etc. – music2myear Nov 14 '23 at 15:24
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    There's several questions on this site regarding reinstalling OEM Windows licenses. Here's a few I found that look promising: https://superuser.com/questions/1307096/retrieve-embedded-windows-10-key/ https://superuser.com/questions/1159970/how-to-reinstall-and-reactivate-windows-10-with-an-oem-license https://superuser.com/questions/1261376/reinstalling-a-fresh-windows-7-on-a-ssd-while-its-original-hdd-version-was-upgra – music2myear Nov 14 '23 at 15:41
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    Just use the Media Creation Tool. You will have to boot to the media you create, delete all partitions on the disk, in order to reinstall Windows on it. BitLocker does not enable itself, and without the recovery key, there is no way to boot Windows that is on the device. The license key will automatically be discovered. This seems like a duplicate of "How to reinstall Windows 10 on a new disk" and there are several potential duplicates. – Ramhound Nov 14 '23 at 18:16
  • It's good to know for situations like this that the Windows key can be pulled from the hardware. It's all worked nicely just wiping the drive and installing fresh. – Michael McCauley Nov 15 '23 at 17:58

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Thanks to the comments from @music2myear and @Ramhound, this is all resolved. I wasn't previously aware that current machines can host a Windows key and the installer can retrieve it. I deleted all OEM partitions and installed from scratch using the USB installer that I already had on hand. I usually build my own computers, and the last couple of laptops I needed to refresh were built some time ago, before Windows 10.

Michael McCauley
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    Yea, Windows licensing has, for regular people buying pre-built computers, come a long way. Sometimes, if you're used to how things were, it feels weird how simple it is, and you're expecting things to be more difficult or you feel you're missing steps. – music2myear Nov 15 '23 at 19:45