linuxmemes

You know, this is actually one Windows decision I agree with. Encryption should be default, especially on portable devices like laptops. For an OS aimed at people who want to use their computers, rather than understand them, you have to choose an encryption that works by default for most of your non-tech-savvy users.

If they want their data truly in their own hands, or full control, use Linux.

If they want to use Windows, but not rely on a Microsoft account for recovery, get the bitlocker recovery key and write it down (which you can do).

But I think this looks like a sane default.

(Full disclosure, I don't use Windows for anything I care about!)

Windows is still around?????

Windows 10 or 11?

I thought bitlocker had a maximum of 20 digits for the pin and only numbers were allowed.

This was the exact same situation I experienced with my old Surface 6. Started to look into Linux firmware on Surface devices and deactivated secure boot because it wouldn't boot Ventoy at all and do nothing, so I figured to try again with no secure boot. It still didn't work so I turned it on again, but was then greeted with this Bitlocker screen which I didn't even know it had activated up until this point. I set up a local account so I had no key to reset or something and was literally not able to do anything besides reinstalling the entire system.

Luckily I had nothing important on it lol

Weirdly the activation was saved on the MS servers so I didn't need to do that again at least (was a preinstalled system so I wouldn't have known the activation key anyways, I thought "When it doesn't work I'll switch to Linux fully because I'm not paying for that garbage system").

After I updated Ventoy I was able to boot again even with secure boot on, there seems to have been an issue with that specific version.

I had Windows on my device since I bought it (around 2018) only upgraded to W11. It never mentioned anything about Bitlocker before this incident so if I had important stuff on it it would have been so over. Well, never save important files on Windows without backup is what I got out of it

This caused me literally bigger problems than my switch to Arch Linux after having only used Windows the entire time xD

This is gonna happen to a lot more people with their password change.

Why do you have to use there? Nothing a cater. You can't use Google or open source. I don't get it. They suck.

Like I need more spyware on my phone.

What about people with landlines? Older people.

So they're going to lose a huge market share when they force everybody to throw away their computer to run Windows 11.