I don't have TPM, so using group policy set it to use a usb drive instead, when i click turn on Bitlocker on my system partition(NTFS), i get the following error I have two partitions - C: is the system partition and D for data. BitLocker Drive Encyption operating systems drives must be formatted using NTFS file system in order to be encrypted. Convert the drive to NTFS, and turn on bitlocker. I have googled and googled this problem but cant seem to find an answer. Any chance of some help. Any one

Press Ctl+Esc then type cmd then right click cmd.exe and select "Run as administrator".in the cmd window that comes up type "Convert /?" without the quotes.This should give you enough information on how to use the convert command to convert your partition to NTFS.

Thanks Proton2, as mentioned in the first post, drive c is already NTFS, regardless i tried to convert it anyway C:\Windows\system32>convert c:/FS:NTFS Drive C: is already NTFS.

Do you have the 200mb or 100mb system partition?

Forgive my ignorance, my c partition is 100GB+ as is mt d partition there is another partitition that is the first partitino on the hard disk, this is the recovery partition as installed by my laptop manafacturer - this is just under 10gb.

The following is quoted form Windows 7 Help and Support under "Hardware requirements for BitLocker Drive Encryption" "To turn on BitLocker Drive Encryption on the operating system drive, your computer’s hard disk must: Have at least two partitions: a system partition (which contains the files needed to start your computer and must be at least 200 MB) and an operating system partition (which contains Windows). The operating system partition will be encrypted and the system partition will remain unencrypted so your computer can start. If your computer doesn't have two partitions, BitLocker will create them for you. Both partitions must be formatted with the NTFS file system. Have a BIOS that is compatible with TPM or supports USB devices during computer startup. If this isn't the case, you will need to update the BIOS before using BitLocker. For more information on updating your BIOS, see Update the BIOS for BitLocker Drive Encryption."

The following is quoted form Windows 7 Help and Support under "Hardware requirements for BitLocker Drive Encryption" BitLocker will create them for you. Both partitions must be formatted with the NTFS file system . Bitlocker isn't creating these for me, how come

I don't know if you might need the BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool butit might be worth looking at.You can download it here...http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=320b9aa9-47e8-44f9-b8d0-4d7d6a75add0&DisplayLang=en Overview Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption is a feature that encrypts one or more volumes (drives) attached to your computer and that can use a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to verify the integrity of early startup components. Because BitLocker encrypts the entire volume of data, it requires the computer to be configured with an active partition, used for startup, which is separate from the operating system volume. This is called a “split-load configuration.” User data is stored on either the operating system volume or additional data volumes, which can also be encrypted by using BitLocker.The BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool automates the following processes to configure the hard disk drive correctly:1. It creates a second volume, if one is not already present.2. It moves the boot files to the correct volume, and ensures that the operating system is correctly configured to find them at startup.3. It configures the correct volume as the active partition on the drive for startup.When the tool finishes, you must restart the computer. The computer’s hard disk drive will then be configured correctly for BitLocker. Note: In addition to having its hard disk drives configured correctly, your computer must meet specific hardware requirements to enable BitLocker, and you may need to initialize or configure the TPM before BitLocker can be enabled.

thanks proton2 The BitLocker driver preperation tool only applies to windows vista and can not be used in windows 7. any other ideas?

How large is your C and D partitions? Is the D partition in NTFS? It should be.

C and D are both about 110Gb C and D are NTFS

If you ran the BitLocker System Check and got an error message it may have been, since you are not useing a TPM, that you did not have a USB memory stick attached during the BitLocker System Check.

I found that some systems can not create the other partition due to files not being able to be moved during parttition creation or windows activation, i.e system restore files, shadow copies, paging files, hibernation, windows needs to be activated for Vista Windows 7 this is built in and not a download as it is with Vista. If you are dploying script the changes below using vbs is the easiest way. Quick fix that has worked for me: Check to see if windows is activated if this is for vista, if Win 7 ignore activation check. disable hibernation:(this gets rid of the hiberfil file on the system drive.) cmd /C "powercfg.exe /hibernate off" Turn off system restore/shadow copies then run a disk cleanup after reboot(This removes the restore data ties to your shadow copies) turn off your paging file, reboot then delete it from the C: drive, yes it is hidden but after a reboot run this command to delete it: del c:\pagefile.sys /Q /F /A:S Now try annd turn on Bitlocker through the control panel as there should not be any fiels that can not be moved now. If it runs after that do the reverse and turn your paging file back on to system managed or whatever you had it set to before and turn back on your system restore/shadow copies and turn back on hibernation for laptop users. to get your encryption status at the prompt and check your key protectors a easy command to run form the command prompt as admin is: cscript manage-bde -status or remotely; cscript manage-bde -status -cn ComputerNameHere Also if you try running the manage-bde commands from the comand prompt sometimes this can give you more information into what is going on and what you can do to fix it. Othen methods you can manually do are here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee732026(WS.10).aspx

From Technet BdeHdCfg.exe Parameter Reference Updated: May 3, 2010 Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 The BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool (BdeHdCfg.exe) is used to prepare a hard drive with the partitions necessary for BitLocker Drive Encryption. Most installations of Windows 7 will not need to use this tool because BitLocker setup includes the ability to prepare and repartition drives as required. Warning There is a known conflict with the Deny write access to fixed drives not protected by BitLocker Group Policy setting located in Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\BitLocker Drive Encryption\Fixed Data Drives. If BdeHdCfg is run on a computer when this policy setting is enabled, you may encounter the following issues: If you attempted to shrink the drive and create the system drive, the drive size will be successfully reduced and a raw partition will be created. However, the raw partition will not be formatted. The following error message is displayed: "The new active Drive cannot be formatted. You may need to manually prepare your drive for BitLocker." If you attempted to use unallocated space to create the system drive, a raw partition will be created. However, the raw partition will not be formatted. The following error message is displayed: "The new active Drive cannot be formatted. You may need to manually prepare your drive for BitLocker." If you attempted to merge an existing drive into the system drive, the tool will fail to copy the required boot file onto the target drive to create the system drive. The following error message is displayed: "BitLocker setup failed to copy boot files. You may need to manually prepare your drive for BitLocker." If this policy setting is being enforced, a hard drive cannot be repartitioned because the drive is protected. If you are upgrading computers in your organization from a previous version of Windows and those computers were configured with a single partition, you should create the required BitLocker system partition before applying the policy setting to the computers. The following BdeHdCfg.exe parameters are included in this reference: -driveinfo Alan MacKenzie asmac@hotmail.com