5

Here's Explorer:

enter image description here

This is the Bitlocker manager:

enter image description here

They are obviously not in agreement and the drives ARE unlocked. Right click in explorer on S: or Z: shows the "Unlock drive" option. When selected it informs the drive is already unlocked. Double click on those drives has the same effect, since "Unlock Drive" is the default action (this is the part that bothers me).

Lastly, manage-bde -status is identical for S:, X: and Z: on all aspects.

Restarting explorer.exe or rebooting Windows updates explorer to the correct status of the drive. This problem happens intermittently and I have not been able to track what triggers it.

How could I track down the cause of this problem? Maybe there is an event viewer entry related to this?

Win 10 Pro x64 1607 (14393.351), and this issue has been happening for a while, before KB3199986 and possibly also before the other major update.

4
  • If you just double-click on one of the drives that appears "locked", does it open as if it's unlocked? "Restarting explorer.exe or rebooting Windows updates explorer to the correct status of the drive" How about if you just hit "refresh" (F5) in Explorer, after unlocking the drive(s)? Oct 28, 2016 at 18:06
  • Refresh is not enough. It does not open, it says the drive is already unlocked (included in OP)
    – Gaia
    Oct 28, 2016 at 19:27
  • @Gaia I encountered a similar problem. My workaround is here on SU.. Any luck with this? Just happened again to me. The triggering event appears to be windows updates.
    – PatKilg
    Oct 17, 2017 at 2:02
  • Thanks @EntropyWins, I will look into it next time it happens. But you should post it as an answer here, as your question there is a duplicate of this one and will be flagged as such.
    – Gaia
    Oct 17, 2017 at 15:22

3 Answers 3

1

I tried my luck with below steps and it worked for me.

Note: You can't access your drive from Windows Explorer to check your data

Walkthrough

  • Go to run & type diskmgmt.msc and click OK to run it
  • then right click on your drive & explore (it will show all your files in Windows Explorer)

Note: From Windows Explorer you can't access your encrypted drive it informs (the drive is already unlocked)

Walkthrough (2)

  • First access Control Panel & go to Bitlocker.
  • Then, very important, it will not allow to remove password of the drive.
  • So now, click on change password option then type OLD password & then new password.
  • After your password gets changed successfully then try to remove the password it will start decrypting your drive. It will take a very long time but don't worry.
0
0

Not an explanation but a workaround: Instead of rebooting you could run the following commands from an elevated command shell (run as administrator). These commands perform a forced lock/unlock, which seem to correct the error state:

(E: is the encrypted drive in this example)

manage-bde -lock E: -ForceDismount
manage-bde -unlock E: -Password

Instead the last statement, you could also use the Windows Explorer to unlock the drive, as you normally would.

Unlocked drive

1
  • will try and report back. good find!
    – Gaia
    Dec 14, 2018 at 3:10
-3

Right click drive > open, voila, works like charm.

2
  • It is clear by the question that this suggestion didn't work.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 7, 2017 at 15:09
  • Well, I have absolutely same issue on Windows 10 Enterprise and generally, I ignore it because i can still access the files way described here. So to some people it may help. However, I would appreciate real solution to this issue, because it tends to make people angry. Jan 8, 2019 at 21:03

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