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.
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.
I don't know about that.
Dumb terminal concept was more what Chromebook was doing.
Microsoft is doing something even stupider.
I think they want you to only use Windows and pay for cloud storage.
By enforcing BitLocker and Secure Boot, they are trying to eliminate dual-booting (you don't need to dual-boot Windows/Linux anyway, as you can just use WSL2 /s).
By enforcing disk encryption, in general, they try to force the use of cloud storage, by making data recovery nearly impossible. Most people are probably too lazy to buy external storage, and manually copy their files over.
This guarantees 2 money streams. One from Windows's tracking/advertising and the other from OneDrive subscriptions.
Exactly, as I can just wipe the disc and install OpenBSD.