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Is this the way Bitlocker is supposed to on Boot drive on Legacy Bios?
Hello everyone, I'm new to your forum and have a few Bitlocker questions.
I installed Bitlocker on removable external drives a while back and am okay with how they work. Today I enabled Bitlocker on a 10+ year old laptop with a legacy bios and MBR drive running Windows 10 22h2.
It asked that a USB drive be inserted as part of the process. I did that. It asked what method was to be used to bitlock the drive. I chose the compatible method for older drives - mostly because I'd already done that on the external drives. I did not choose the new and improved method.
Bitlocker only asked for the USB drive to be inserted. As mentioned, I did that early on.
Bitlocker did not ask me to enter a password or key code at all. It did suggest that I save the recovery key code, which I did. The encryption process did not take as long as expected, but it did take a while. No window popped up to say it was encrypting or that it was done doing that.
Then in Control Panel/BitLocker it showed the main drive/boot drive and showed BitLocker was "ON".
The page where it did that did not give me any options to select or any links to click on saying "manage BitLocker" like it did when I BitLocked the external drives.
The next thing I did was shut down windows and reboot with the USB drive inserted. The laptop booted into Windows. It did not ask for a password or pin or anything else.
I began to wonder, "What good is this if the laptop still boots normally with no request for key code, password or pin?"
So I shut down the laptop, removed the USB drive, and restarted the laptop. It booted right into Windows with no problem and did NOT ask for anything like a password or pin.
There was no opportunity to set auto-unlock or auto-lock on or off during the setup routine when the drive was encrypted.
There is also no "manage BitLocker" in blue to click on. And nothing happens when I right-click or left-click on the "BitLocker on" in blue by the OS drive in the BitLocker section of Control Panel.
In short, it is just like BitLocker never encrypted the drive. Is that the way it is supposed to work? It says "BitLocker is On"
Should I have chosen the "new encryption method" instead of "compatible method"?
My objective is to protect the data on all the drives - both the external drives and the internal drive. I'm more worried about theft of the laptop from the home or the car or when traveling.
I am not worried about someone removing the drive and using it in a different computer.
Winver is 19045.4170