I came back from France with an External hard drive (seagate). In France I used Bitlocker with a code to open the drive. Also I didn't save the recovery key in another flash or USB key. Now I'm trying to open the drive but it won't let me enter the code at all- but goes directly to the screen wich tells me that if I forgot my password I should use my recovery key which is inside the drive. I know my password and it's very simple, but there is no option to enter it. I tried to open it in several computers in my company, always the same problem. All the coputers are with windows 7 with useable Bitlocker. How can I get to the screen which asks me for the password? Thank you in advance.. David

Hi David, The key point here in the issue is what type the orginal Windows 7 OS recognizes the external hard drive. If it has been recognized as a fixed data drive on that system, you wont't have the option to input encrypted password when you move the hard drive to another Windows 7 OS. If it has been recognized as removable storage device in the orginal Windows 7, you will have the option to unlock the encrypted drive with your known password. This is actually by design. As i know, there is no ohter options besides the recovery password to unlock the fixed data drive. Hope it helps. Scorpio TechNet Software Assurance Managed Newsgroup MCTS: Windows Vista | Exchange Server 2007 MCITP: Enterprise Support Technician | Server & Enterprise Admin | System Architect

Hi Scorpio, Thank you for clarifying the problem. Let me expand what you said. In most (if not in all) computers there is a TPM chip which is in charge of the security of the computers codes. If you take an external hard drive which was encrypted by BitLocker it will check if this computer is the original encrypter or not, and if not, like in my case, it won't let you enter the code, but will ask for the Recovery Key. The TPM chip must be over 1.2 in its version. The question is how can I use this information to try and open my drive? How can I know what is the version of the TPM chip in every computer? If I would find a coputer with TPM lower than 1.2 will I be able to enter my code? Thank you, David

Hi David, What you have understood is correct. BitLocker considers fixed data volumes (if the external hard-drive is recognized as it) to have computer affinity. If this is a fixed volume, the unlock information would be stored in the machine registry hive and the fixed drive would be unlocked automatically on the machine boot. In this case, you should need to put the external hard-drive on the orginal encrypted computer to make it prompt up diaglox to input encrypted code. Otherwise, you may need to use Recovery password to recover the encrypted hard-drive in order to open it on a different computer. By design, on Windows 7 and Winodws Server 2008 R2 data volumes on fixed drives automatically unlock on machine start, while data volumes on removable drives auto-unlock on logon of the user who has enabled automatically-unlock. Besides, TPM is only one protector of operation system volume, it won't used when we encrypt data volume. To check the TPM version, you may simply open Trusted Platform Module Managment console by running "TPM.msc", and then check the version in the middle area. Hope my explanation is clear and helpful for you. ScoprioTechNet Software Assurance Managed Newsgroup MCTS: Windows Vista | Exchange Server 2007 MCITP: Enterprise Support Technician | Server & Enterprise Admin | System Architect