1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
266
July 15th, 2023 06:00
XPS 17 9710 with Windows Home edition locked in Bitlocker boot lop
XPS 17 9710
I have two XPS 17 9710 laptops with Windows 11 Home edition that were purchased February last year. Last weekend, they both encountered the same problem: When they boot up, they ask for the Bitlocker key. Both laptops have the Windows 11 Home edition installed and Bitlocker is not available in the Home edition. I went to the Microsoft account that the PC was set up on and there was a Bitlocker key stored for the locked laptop stored on the account and the date of the key was the same date that the laptop was first setup, February 2022. I tried using that key to unlock the laptop but that didn't work. I went into the Command Prompt from Troubleshoot, Advanced Options and entered "manage-bde -status" and got a response that the status was "Unknown". Repairing the OS doesn't work because the drive is not accessible. Anybody got any suggestions? I know I could completely reinstall the OS but I don't know if that would even fix the problem since it is also a hardware problem. If this was just on one laptop, I would have written the problem off as a hardware failure but that is unlikely since it happened to two laptops simultaneously. Surely these are not the only two XPS 17 9710 laptops with this problem. Someone else must be having the same problem.
GeezerTheGeek
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 18th, 2023 19:00
I was finally able to get this fixed. I confirmed that the OS for these laptops was Windows 11 Home. Bitlocker is not available on the Home version of Windows 11 so why were these two identical laptops requesting the Bitlocker key while booting up? Apparently, when they were first set up, they both created a Bitlocker key and they stored the key on the MS account used during the initial set up, The date on the keys was the same date that the laptops were received from Dell and setup. What made the problem even worst was that the drives would not unlock if you entered the key during the boot-up. I was able to unlock the drives and turn encryption off by using the manage-bde commands. However, the drives still would not boot after unlocking them and turning off encryption. I had to reset the OS but at least I didn't to do a total reset because unlocking the drives did give me access to the accounts that were setup on the PC. I think Dell is to blame for this problem happening but Dell Support-Assist did make it resetting the OS easier. Still, it took several hours of work over several days to recover the PCs.
GeezerTheGeek
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 19th, 2023 10:00
Although I didn't mention it in the notes above, I did try making BIOS changes to fix the problem as has been recommended on other posts. All of that effort was for naught. A OS reset was the only solution that worked for me.
GeezerTheGeek
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 15th, 2023 19:00
OK, I thought I was close to getting this fixed. I was able to use manage-bde to unlock the drive with the recovery key that was on the MS account and then I used manage-bde to turn off Bitlocker. That got me passed the Bitlocker prompt on the next boot but then when booting, I got another error: "Stop code: DRIVER UNLOADED WITHOUT CANCELLING PENDING OPERATIONS, What failed: nvpcf.sys. "
That error kept looping and rebooting without giving me any recovery options. So I thought that my only option to fix this is to do a system restore from a bootable USB. However, when I booted from the USB and tried to install the OS, I got another error stating "We couldn't find any drives. To get a storage driver, click Load driver." But when I clicked "Load driver", I got a message stating "No signed device drivers were found". Great! Where can I find a signed driver for this drive? I looked under the XPS 17 9710 drivers on the Dell Support page but I couldn't find anything that I thought was the right driver. Where can I find the driver I need to be able to use the storage drive?
GeezerTheGeek
1 Rookie
•
5 Posts
0
July 15th, 2023 20:00
If it is of any help, the BIOS reports the storage device as the following:
M.2 PCIe SSD-1
Type = 512GB PC711 NVMe SK hynik 512GB
Device = PC711 NVMe SK hynik 512GB
The Dell packing list and purchasing order lists it as 400-BLXW 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive