Hello. I encrypted my drive with w7 ultimate. External usb drive.Then i moved to anothe rcountry and left pc therenow i just have xp or w7 home edition hereCant access that drive anymoreinstalled xp and ultimate on an vmware workstation, but always get msg my drive need to be formattedtried that to go software , but no luckon ultimate on vmware i get parameter incorrect then i try to decryptDO i have a vmware problem or soemthing else?really need to decrypt that driveStill know passwordcant even turn on bitlocker on a diff windows 7 ultimateany ideas?thanls in advance

Hi, I'm not sure if this can be caused by VMware as normally, it should show "Lock" or "Unlock" icon on the encrypted partition. If you have a Windows 7 system instead of in the vmware, I suggest you use the command to unlock it first. Below is my example on how to unlock the encrypted drive: C:\Windows\system32>cscript manage-bde.wsf -unlock D: -recoverypassword 663476-6 75928-162613-019481-087318-052591-699325-060225 Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 6.1.7600 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. WARNING: The script manage-bde.wsf is not supported. Please use manage-bde.exe. The password successfully unlocked volume D:. Note: recoverypassword is saved to a file or printed before encrypting the drive. In my example: BitLocker Drive Encryption Recovery Key The recovery key is used to recover the data on a BitLocker protected drive. To verify that this is the correct recovery key compare the identification with what is presented on the recovery screen. Recovery key identification: E4ABFD19-C813-46 Full recovery key identification: E4ABFD19-C813-46FF-AFBD-3834E50EB398 BitLocker Recovery Key: 663476-675928-162613-019481-087318-052591-699325-060225 If this is successfully done, you can try turning Bitlocker off: C:\Windows\system32>cscript manage-bde.wsf -off D: Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. BitLocker Drive Encryption: Configuration Tool version 6.1.7600 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. WARNING: The script manage-bde.wsf is not supported. Please use manage-bde.exe. Decryption is now in progress. After that, Bitlocker is turned off on the drive.Meanwhile, you can refer to the following KB article for further information: How to use the BitLocker Repair Tool to help recover data from an encrypted volume in Windows Vista or in Windows Server 2008http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928201Hope this helps!Sean Zhu - MSFT

Hi Sean Zhu, Can u please clarify me few things 1.cscript manage-bde.wsf -unlock N: -recoverypassword 228624-050116-019305-586685-688633-579172-380424-250943 how much time script will take to unlock because i put the complete 1 Night 14 Hrs still nothing had happen My case "I enabled Bitlocker for my External Hard Disk 62 % was been encrypted after that due to sudden power shutdown in my Laptop it was stopped so whenever i insert my hard disk it's asking for a password,i am giving the right password even i done recovery key to unlock this device in browser but after sometime the screen will go in NOT Responding mode I had done more than 25 to 30 times but no use now i am using ur script "to unlock but i don't know how much time it will take,please consider this a critical case my critical data in regards to my company & my personal Data is residing in external Hard drive. 2.Please let me know are there any tools that can help me to resolve the issue You can reach me on haleem_hyd@yahoo.co.in Please let me know how can i take my next step and recover my data. Regards Mohammed Abdul Haleem haleem_hyd@yahoo.co.in