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I have an old laptop from 2015 that has no TPM. I did encrypt the drive with a password using BitLocker and every boot I just input the password. Sometimes though, I turn on my laptop and let it sit, while I go make tea (or whatever else), and after returning, the password input field doesn't accept any characters when typing on my keyboard. I have to restart the machine in that case. How do I fix this problem without buying a TPM?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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By default, UEFI boot manager on Windows has 1 minute timeout. Possibly your system doesn't shut down properly for some reason and instead freezes CPU?

You can disable this behavior using

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} bootshutdowndisabled 1

Details are available on Microsoft: BcdLibraryElementTypes enumeration

BcdLibraryBoolean_BootShutdownDisabled

Disables the 1-minute timer that triggers shutdown on boot error screens, and the F8 menu, on UEFI systems. The element data format is BcdBooleanElement.

Note This value is supported starting in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

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This will let you get into the Automatic Repair mode but since your drive is still encrypted, almost all actions will fail. For example, trying to Reset the PC will display this following message:

There was a problem resetting your PC. No changes were made. So, what can we do? Well, obviously we must unlock the drive, but to do this we need to be in command prompt.

To the Command Prompt!

Click Advanced options Click Command Prompt We are almost done!

Before we can type in the unlock command, we need to know what drive volume we are wanting to unlock. In command prompt, type in

manage-bde -status Somewhere in the print out from this command you should see “BitLocker Drive Encryption: Volume”. In my case, I have “Volume D:”.

Now it is time to unlock! In command prompt, type in

manage-bde -unlock D: -pw Basically, this says we want to unlock volume D: and use our BitLocker password. There are other options for unlocking such as recovery key, but since we already entered the password once to get here, we know the password is correct. The password should not be our issue.

At this point, we should see in command prompt:

Enter the password to unlock this volume: Enter your password and hit enter. Once completed and successful you will see the following message:

The password successfully unlocked volume D: . That is it! your drive is now unlocked and you can continue troubleshooting and repairing PC. Anyways, I hope this helps you get further to fixing your PC. Good Luck!

PS: Oddly, resetting my CMOS was my solution…

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  • Hey there, maybe I am not that good at phrasing my question but the thing is, I can't do anything (neither enter a command prompt) because the screen where I need to input the password, freezes after some inactivity time (including the whole computer) so I need to restart it. I'm just wondering if it's possible to fix? As of now I need to "quickly" input the password (so no tea for me before unlocking the drive).
    – Gizmo
    Mar 19, 2019 at 20:38
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Actually I had the same issue right now with a Windows Dev Kit 2023. Boot comes up with Bitlocker (rather large text) and demands the key. You enter it, it says "Unlock Bitlocker" and nothing happens. The trick is to press Esc first, this boots up some other Bitlocker recovery screen witch actually works. After entering the correct key you get a confirmation and need to reboot.

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