Ubuntu installation on computers running Windows and BitLocker turned on

Documentation
7

People are probably asking support questions on this page because:

  1. Ubiquity itself links to Intel RST
  2. Intel RST redirects here, rather than to a user-facing version of the document.

If people shouldn’t be asking questions here, where is the user-facing version? Google hasn’t found it.

8

Initially there were two static pages, but they proved to not display well on phones, so we got bug #1874068 and replaced them with redirects here for now.

The static pages still exist:

So if someone makes those pages phone friendly, we can drop the redirects anytime.

9

Yikes! I wasn’t expecting to see my scribbly design sketches used in user-facing help pages.

I wonder why those pages are generated from Google Docs (judging by all the .lst-kix_ styles), rather than from these Discourse posts. Many Canonical sites (including ubuntu.com/server/docs and multipass.run/docs) have responsive help pages exported from Discourse posts. But I guess the software doing those exports won’t run on help.ubuntu.com. I’ve made a request for Canonical’s Web team to investigate how to generate responsive exports on help.ubuntu.com as well.

10

Minor edit under ‘Turn BitLocker off’

It should be: In Windows, open Settings > type BitLocker in the search box.

Not ‘type manage BitLocker’.

Thanks.

11

Hi,

I ran into this BitLocker issue for the first time and was really bothered with the decrypt/install/re-encrypt approach. As the boot and recovery partitions are not encrypted, I tried a different approach which worked fine. So there is a 4th option! Here it is:

  • Manage your partitions manually:
    1. On windows, launch the partition manager tool (type “partition” in the search bar and it should show up).
    2. Resize your main Windows partition to leave enough empty space for your ubuntu install (e.g. 128Gb).
    3. Boot on Ubuntu installer disk.
    4. When prompted with the different install choices, choose the option to manually manage your partitions.
    5. Select the free space and create at least one partition (mount as “/”). If you do not know how many and which partitions to create, there are many posts on the subject already.
    6. Install your Ubuntu and enjoy.

The whole process took less than 5mn to setup on my machine. I bet the decrypt is much much longer and generates a lot of unnecessary writes (bad for SSDs). Sadly, the installer is not able to automatically manage an install alongside Windows when there is free space on the disk. It is like it detects BitLocker and redirects to the help message with the link to this page. Hence the only option for now is to manage the partitions manually, which may rebute some users…

I hope this helps others.

5 Likes
12

2 posts were split to a new topic: SSD includes windows 10 with Bitlocker enabled

13

And don’t forget to save your BitLocker recovery key somewhere outside encrypted partition. By installing Ubuntu, you end up with 2 ways to boot Windows: 1 is using its EFI loader directly, another is chainloading in Grub. The choice affects PCRs that are being checked during a boot process with BitLocker enabled, so if you always used one way, but decided to use another this time, you’ll be prompted to enter the recovery key. The only solution to re-configure the default is a) suspend BitLocker protection in its preferences (affects the next boot only IIRC); b) enter your key to boot the way you want it (via Grub / direct EFI loader) and willing to use further.

14

Hi,
if the ubuntu are installed , can bitlocker be activaded again

15

Hi, I intend installing Ubuntu on a sata external drive which doesn’t have Bitlocker turned on. My main boot disk does have it turned on. I intend dual booting. Do I still need to turn off Bitlocker?

16

Hi, I have installed both Windows 11 and Ubuntu, and bitlocker was disabled for the installation, but then I enabled it back on after some rebooting to ensure all was working. Works fine with bitlocker enabled.

17

I had a new PC with similar state. I had to “activate” (including saving the safety key), then I could deactivate, then I could proceed with Ubuntu installation.

1 Like
18

SOLVED:
Because the disk is in decrypting process.
You can check status by this command.

manage-bde -status
Source: https://www.manageengine.com/products/os-deployer/help/how-to-disable-bitlocker-encryption.html

19

Thank you for this idea! Worked for me - in part. In case anyone else runs into the situation that they can’t access Windows after installing Ubuntu because bitlocker requires their recovery key and like me were lazy and did not back up the key before (and did not upload it into their Microsoft account) - keep calm. For me it worked to go into BIOS and remove Ubuntu from boot options. This seems to have satisfied bitlocker, I could log back into Windows. First thing: back up that bitlocker key…

TL;DR: before doing this maybe back up your bitlocker key.

20

This guide is not useful for situations where Microsoft Windows has a virus and the main aim is to avoid running the Windows OS until the virus has been removed (or data recovered).

21

Hi,

So I wanted to give Ubuntu a try and I didn’t want to lose my Windows Bitlocker disk. Here’s how I installed both. If you have two SSD drives and only want to install Ubuntu on one, you can unplug the Windows one during Ubuntu install and install like you would normally with full disk encryption.

After Ubuntu has been successfully installed just put back the Windows drive and select which one to boot using your BIOS.

1 Like
22

The Ubuntu 22 installer says that it is necessary to reboot into Windows and disable BitLocker, offering a QR code and a link to https://help.ubuntu.com/bitlocker (which links here).

However this is not correct: Suspend Bitlocker before starting the Ubuntu installation and you will avoid the lengthy procedure of decrypting and re-encrypting the disk (which spoils your SSD/NVMe as well).

I also shrunk the Windows volume using diskmgmt.msc so that Ubuntu would have no issues finding the free space where to install.

2 Likes
23

Thank you!

I’ve successfully installed Ubuntu along side with Windows 11 which had BitLocker enabled by your method. Now both Ubuntu and Windows boot normally.

More more precisely, the option is Something else

1 Like
24

This needs to be reversed please! It makes no sense at all to force turning off bitlocker for drives that you don’t want to include in the install.

For Example: Dual booting windows and ubuntu, but having a storage drive specific for windows only access that’s bit-lockered.

this drive will never, EVER be part of my Ubuntu install. It makes zero sense that the entire ubuntu installation would be stopped due to this.

How do you move past the installation in this case? Sorry, but the recommendation to just remove bitlocker from the drive is kind of asanine when it’s an unnecessary block Ubuntu is imposing that should be skippable.

2 Likes
25

Too late… I had to read comments before proceeding… it’s been 12hr and still going

1 Like
26

Please please please add this to the main post above (or the install prompt on Ubuntu). So much simpler and saves time of decrypting and encrypting.

1 Like