Ubuntu + Windows with Bitlocker

Lounge
1

Ok, I turned off Bitlocker, Waiting for it to finish, seems like it may be a while…anyway, so after I install Ubuntu, will I be able to reinstall bitlocker or will I have to use your version and I presume its works on the windows side? ,

2

I have a strange behaviour on a Lenovo Yoga-Book. Windows 10 installed, Bitlocker not activated (Windows says, that the drive is waiting to be activated).
Partition in partitionmanager itself is shown to have a bitlocker activated…

I cannot install Ubuntu 20 with an active bitlocker, but how can I disable a bitlocker that is already disabled???

3

@gunther-hebein I had the same issue. Just activate Bitlocker and deactivate it again.

2 Likes
4

@gunther-hebein Alternatively, go to Settings > Device encryption and click the button “Turn off”.
Ref: https://superuser.com/questions/1299600/is-a-volume-with-bitlocker-waiting-for-activation-encrypted-or-not

5

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.

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6

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

7

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?

8

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.

9

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
10

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

11

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.

12

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
13

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

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14

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
15

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

1 Like
16

Best answer ever. This worked for me like a charm.

17

Worked like charm! Thank you, it saves so much time and effort!

18

Why isn’t this in the options above?!!!

19

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

20

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.