I got the laptop from a customer on Monday, back then it still ran, was on standby and logged in.. Then tried to backup the data to a SMB network share, but the laptop suddenly got lockups, so I needed to reboot. After that the password didn't work anymore.
I booted with a PartedMagic boot cd, but was unable to mount because the windows drive was BitLocker. She is 100% sure the password is right, but I never entered it myself.
Any idea how the data could be backupped? Is there a chance it could only be a BitLocker partition, but the data in fact not encrypted? How could I mount it then from a Linux live CD?
I would appreciate any advice, because such a case never happened to me... but I'm not so up-to-date with Windows 10 & 11.. I didn't do many reinstalls with them..
- Login is so far impossible, because there is no USB key and no answers to the security questions.
- with a PartedMagic DVD booted and using "blkid" of "sfdisk" I see a BitLocker Partition but not a normal NTFS one
- tried to mount that partition but the filesystem can not be detected
Update:
I found BitLockerUtility and tried, it says it has no encrypted partition. So I suspect the NTFS could be just within that BitLocker Partition, at a specific offset. GParted and Ubuntu installation both offer me to resize the "bitlocker" typed partition, but I don't dare to try because I fear them rendering it corrupt (there is a 1TB NTFS in it, and what if resize doesn't handle it properly?)
Login to their live.com account https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey
That will give you the recovery key. Then attach the hard drive as a secondary drive to your computer and put the recovery key in. Then copy off the data.
Or.put the recovery key into the place when you. Oot from DVD.