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.
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.
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
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.
Too late… I had to read comments before proceeding… it’s been 12hr and still going
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.
The EFI partition that comes with preinstalled Windows is rather small. Users who know the caveats of creating their own partition are smart enough to do it without this mentioned directly. Users who know a bit about partitioning but do not understand the full consequences should no tbe urged to forge ahead. Also, adding warnings about this-and-that for the borderline users does not belong here. It is better leave the instructions as simple as possible.
Best answer ever. This worked for me like a charm.
Worked like charm! Thank you, it saves so much time and effort!
I had the same issue. I installed Windows without creating a Windows (online) account. It appears that the disk was indeed encrypted, but Bitlocker settings said “not activated” because full activation requires a Windows account. It’s still possible to turn off encryption in “Device encryption” settings panel without Bitlocker appearing as activated.
Why isn’t this in the options above?!!!
my experience doing this on one drive is that Windows tends to just take over the boot manager when you alter your device encryption configuration (as in, decrypt device then install ubuntu on dual boot then re-encrypt which requires you to set BIOS to load the windows boot manager first) - windows just goes ahead and removes your boot manager when you do that
also it’s a massive waste not to have access to your other drive from ubuntu
personally i think it’s not worth the pain to do any of this, not even with two separate drives and changing the boot order by entering the bios setup
if you must have encryption at the HD level I’d use something like VeraCrypt and have it accessible from both systems, and stay within Linux and LUKS for the serious stuff
imo ubuntu should be shipping computers with Ubuntu LTS installed and windows home preinstalled in some virtualised solution within it
dual booting is an absolute pain these days, it’s as bad as its ever been with secure boot, tpm, bitlocker etc etc yadda yadda users cannot be expected to have to deal with that
Thanks for posting this info.
I have just upgraded win10 to win11 and had the same issue as one commenter, that bitlocker was not activated but still blocking the install from a USB stick. I activated it, deactivated, and had to resart the computer twice.
THen I checked in Disk Manager and it was indeed no longer encrypted by BitLocker. I could then restart for the 5th time or so, and the install Ubuntu 20.0 from USB stick worked.
i agree because i have a 4 tb nvme that i now have to decrypt so i can duel boot and its 4 terabytes so its taking forever
So, I ran into this issue because the ubuntu installer was picking up a partition on my ventoy USB that was encrypted with bitlocker, not the install drive. Once I turned off bitlocker on that partition it installed fine.
I’d add another two steps: encrypting Ubuntu partitions and enabling Bitlocker. Earlier this year, I have created a writup for my company’s internal wiki. As a government(s) contractor, we are obligated to have all installed operating systems encrypted, due to us having access to a lot of sensitive data and IP. If there is a demand, I can translate it and post it on discourse as a tutorial as well.