Back in January Microsoft encrypted all my hard drives without saying anything. I was playing around with a dual boot yesterday and somehow aggravated Secureboot. So my C: panicked and required a 40 character key to unlock.
Your key is backed up to the Microsoft account associated with your install. Which is considerate to the hackers. (and saved me from a re-install) But if you’ve got an unactivated copy, local account, or don’t know your M$ account credentials, your boned.
Control Panel > System Security > Bitlocker Encryption.
BTW, I was aware that M$ was doing this and even made fun of the effected users. Karma.
Just checked my wife’s laptop. Local account, secure boot off, windows 10. It had a message telling me to setup a microsoft account to ‘finish encrypting the device’. I clicked turn off, and it’s currently decrypting the hard drive. Blech.
They also do spyware. They just renamed it “AI.”
and also Recall
Bit late to this thread but I know a few commands that might help if you’re stuck:
manage-bde -off C:(or any other drive) This decrypts the volume and turns off bitlockermanage-bde -lock/unlockmanage-bde -protectors -get C:(or any other drive) This displays your 48-digit key. I suggest you store it somewhere, just to be safe.Get-BitlockerVolumereveals which of your partitions are encrypted with Bitlocker.Disclaimer: I am not a terminal nerd, I just had similar problems years ago and went down the rabbit hole, used these commands and turned off bitlocker permanently. I don’t use windows anymore, but when I did, it didn’t cause any problems with bitlocker after this. If you’re concerned about your un-encrypted hard drives, consider using Veracrypt (carefully!) or similar open source encryption software.
Holy shit, they automatically activate it on computers without an account to back the key up to?
That’s just malicious
Meanwhile in Linux with luls, which I’ve had since a pre-pre-pre version somewhere back in the early 2000’s, I can have multiple keys, all works like sunshine, never had problems.
On windows… So we work with highly sensitive data, and ever since I came in I thought it insane that people working remote don’t have that highly sensitive data encrypted. We can’t switch Linux yet, so okay, we go for BitLocker.
Boy oh boy oh boy was that a mistake.
50 remote users, 5 get encrypted devices with BitLocker as a trial and within a month, 3 of them already got locked up permanently because apparently it’ll pwrma lock itself after x amounts of invalid passwords which is just incredibly stupid. But don’t worry, there is a backup key! Yeah, that is lie 48 characters that we’d had to pass by phone and they have to type it flawlessly.
Suffice to say, the remote users will be running Linux soon, like it or not.
Yeah, that is lie 48 characters that we’d had to pass by phone and they have to type it flawlessly.
Wouldn’t be so bad if everyone knew their Alpha Bravo Charlies
My one talent: alpha bravo charlie delta echo foxtrot golf hotel India Juliet kilo Lima mike November Oscar papa Quebec Romeo Sierra tango uniform Victor whiskey x-ray Yankee Zulu, typed using voice to text
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I suggest we move all our machines over to Linux, which is the actual plan. Fuck everything about windows
Also, permanently locking a device after x failed attempts is just plain silly, security wise. You know I can take that drive out and just try to brute force it a million times per second without that silly rule being in my way, right? It’s an anti security pattern similar to requiring password changes every week, it’s a bad idea.
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Exactly. We’ll switch to Linux, finally have security and dependable devices, and then we’ll move on
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They desperately wanted to eliminate personal computers and replace them with dumb terminals running over the net.
When the public rejected this idea
THIS is their response. They are still insisting on total control of our computers.
They desperately wanted to eliminate personal computers and replace them with dumb terminals running over the net.
I don’t know about that.
Dumb terminal concept was more what Chromebook was doing.
Microsoft is doing something even stupider.
Dumb terminal concept was more what Chromebook was doing.
I mean, for a lot of people they’re fine especially if they’re priced appropriately. Especially with a lot more software as a service out there. My problem is that all of them have a built in drop dead date on when they’re going to stop getting updates and there’s not really a great option for the devices post ChromeOS.
ChromeOS certainly can be a good system. I still have my old CR-48 from when I got selected to test the OS and even when it was in its infancy, it was solid. I used it for a lot of my college career because it was better than my Asus eeePC which had Ubuntu on it.
I had an Intel Chromebox that I ran galliumOS on. The problem is locked bootloaders which should be illegal
If my Chromebook could run Linux or even pure Android, I’d probably use it way more often. But it being a locked down distro with android bolted on is useless to me.
- I can’t really do anything major on it that I can on a cheap laptop
- I can’t really use it for the same games or programs on Android, as the form factor really gets in the way, even in tablet mode.
It feels like the worst of both worlds. It’s fine for people who use a laptop/OS as a bootloader to a web browser, its not fine for weirdos like me.
You could always put Linux on it. I believe there is a way to do that for most ChromeBooks nowadays.
I tried, doesn’t work. There’s no documentation for my laptop or its board codename. I briefly got it to consider an Arch Linux ARM ISO but it just looped an error code on boot until you turned it off.
Good thing PCs aren’t locked into Windows.
yet
Good luck locking loose mainboards sold for the DIY market, which don’t come with anything installed by default, to a given OS, the only way that could maybe work is forcing the OS in ROM.
Another way would be to discontinue the socketed desktop form factors and replace them all with mini PCs that are as locked down as the current Macs.
Thinking for two seconds:
MS pays Google to start enforcing some device verification thing so you can only view a good chunk of the Internet if you pass verification? (Assumes Google goes even harder making the web Chrome-focused)
Ooh Cloudflare could be invited to the party here too. Constant CAPTCHAs if you’re not on an MS AUTHENTI-PC! device. (Think Private Access Token)
…fill in the gaps friends 😉 you know MS has already debated all your “suggestions” anyway
Google already does precisely that with their “open source” mobile OS. People underestimate how easily these guys can ruin stuff
:( tell me more?
First off, Google has made agressive deals with phone manufacturers to ship spyware with their phones by default, and some of the stuff can only get taken out by rooting/jailbreaking the phone. By doing so, they acquired nearly 100% of the app store market share, and then used it to make “useful features” such as integrity checks that are tied to the Play Services app (which is an always on spyware background app).
The end result is, even if you manage to root your phone and install a custom ROM (which is not always available to every model), a bunch of apps will refuse to work properly because you fail the Google Play fingerprinting steps and are assumed to be a security vulnerability. If I’m not mistaken there’s also some shady stuff with certificates, too
This is already part of the trusted computing spec its called “remote attestation” I would actually expect it more targeted at multimedia who are hot to keep you from copying their stuff and banks.
So you’re suggesting MS will somehow block non-Windows OSes from installing, even on hardware like loose mainboards for building your own PC with, or even on barebones mini PC kits or certain laptop SKUs, which don’t ship with an OS installed to begin with and expect the user to install it themselves? I mean, unless something extreme happens like changing the entire PC platform to be like the current Macs, that won’t be feasible.
Also, doing that would kill the Steam Deck which I doubt Valve would take sitting down.
SecureBoot pretty much does this. There is nothing preventing motherboard manufacturers from blocking adding non-MS keys if they wanted to.
No just some laws
