4 Ways to Remove or Disable BitLocker Drive Encryption on Windows 10 (2024)

FAQs

How to disable BitLocker encryption in Windows 10? ›

Things You Should Know. Open the Start menu and type "manage BitLocker." Open the "Manage BitLocker" option and expand the drive you want to decrypt. Click "Turn off BitLocker." Open the Command Prompt as an Administrator and type "manage-bde -off <drive letter>:" and press Enter.

Open Command Prompt as an administrator and type one of the following commands: manage-bde -unlock X: -Password or manage-bde -unlock X: -RecoveryPassword. Remember to replace the letter “X” with the drive letter of the BitLocker encrypted drive.

You can easily disable or turn it off if you don't need BitLocker Encryption to prevent issues during system modification. Moreover, doing so will not modify or delete your data in the drive. However, before disabling BitLocker, you first need to unlock the encrypted drive, as shown below.

To disable the requirement for USB drives to be BitLocker encrypted, you can check the registry key PreventDeviceEncryption. You can update the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BitLocker registry key and set the value of PreventDeviceEncryption to False.

If you don't have the BitLocker password and recovery key, you may need to format the drive to remove the encryption, or use the third-party tools, such as Passware Kit, Elcomsoft Forensic Disk Decryptor, and Elcomsoft Distributed Password Recovery.

Disabling BitLocker

NOTE: Decryption can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours. The time depends on the amount of data that has been encrypted, the speed of the computer, and whether the process is interrupted. Interruptions include the computer being turned off or going to sleep.

BitCracker, Passware Kit, and BLR Tools Forensic Disk Decryptor are a few examples. They can recover and unlock BitLocker devices, as well as analyze your computer's memory. Passware Kit: Regardless of the password's complexity, this solution can scan the computer memory to expose the encryption key stored in RAM.

How to force BitLocker recovery? ›

Force a Recovery of BitLocker Key for Local Computer

The –forcerecovery command of manage-bde will do the task. Go to Cortana search and type “cmd.exe“. When the Best match displays the same, do a right-click and select “Run as administrator“. Agree to the UAC prompt by clicking the Yes button.

The clear key is a cryptographic key stored unencrypted and unprotected on the disk drive. By storing this key unencrypted, the Suspend option allows for changes or upgrades to the computer without the time and cost of decrypting and re-encrypting the entire drive.

Press Windows Start button. Type bitlocker. Click Manage BitLocker to enter the BitLocker Drive Encryption menu. Select Turn off BitLocker to proceed with decryption.

Turn off Standard BitLocker encryption

Type and search [Manage BitLocker] in the Windows search bar①, then click [Open]②. Click [Turn off BitLocker]③ on the drive that you want to decrypt. If the drive is under locked status, you need to click [Unlock drive] and type the password to turn off BitLocker.

BitLocker helps protect the entire operating system drive against offline attacks, whereas EFS can provide additional user-based file level encryption for security separation between multiple users of the same computer.

2) Disable bitlocker through Windows GUI mode

Click Start, click Control Panel, click System and Security, and then click BitLocker Drive Encryption. Look for the drive on which you want BitLocker Drive Encryption turned off, and click Turn Off BitLocker.

Click the Startup type drop-down menu to select Automatic. Click Apply and then click OK to save these changes. To disable Encrypting File System, open Services again and select the Disabled option on the Startup type drop-down menu. Click Apply and OK to apply these changes.

Disabling BitLocker

NOTE: Decryption can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a couple of hours. The time depends on the amount of data that has been encrypted, the speed of the computer, and whether the process is interrupted. Interruptions include the computer being turned off or going to sleep.