With Win 11 in mind I have reinstalled Win 10 on my Lenovo E490. I set up
secure boot, UEFI etc. then during the install deleted all the existing
partition and let it loose. I've even signed on with my MSFT account and
set up a PIN (which I immediately forgot and had to reset).

I then tried to shrink the main partition so I could add a "D" drive and I
can't, apparently bitlocker is et up (not by me, must have been the
install program).

I have tried to turn it off but no success, as a bonus I couldn't log on
to my main machine using remote desktop for some unknown reason, even if I
tell it to use user name and password.

None of the alleged ways of removing bitlocker work, and I have no idea
what the password might be because I didn't set it up. Any way to turn it
off or do I go back to MBR and non secure boot?

--
Jeff Gaines Wiltshire UK
Every day is a good day for chicken, unless you're a chicken.

Jeff Gaines <jgaines_newsid@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> With Win 11 in mind I have reinstalled Win 10 on my Lenovo E490. I set up
> secure boot, UEFI etc. then during the install deleted all the existing
> partition and let it loose. I've even signed on with my MSFT account and
> set up a PIN (which I immediately forgot and had to reset).
>
> I then tried to shrink the main partition so I could add a "D" drive and I
> can't, apparently bitlocker is et up (not by me, must have been the
> install program).

Why can't you shrink with Bitlocker enabled?
https://marc-wouts.medium.com/how-to-resize-bitlocker-and-luks-encrypted-partitions-b8ee70697edb
(I haven't tried this)

> I have tried to turn it off but no success, as a bonus I couldn't log on
> to my main machine using remote desktop for some unknown reason, even if I
> tell it to use user name and password.

>
> None of the alleged ways of removing bitlocker work, and I have no idea
> what the password might be because I didn't set it up. Any way to turn it
> off or do I go back to MBR and non secure boot?

The key might be stored in the TPM, meaning you don't need a password.

If you're reinstalling, you could just partition the drive during installation
and install to a smaller partition. I think Bitlocker should then keep its
paws off the rest of the drive.

FWIW I installed Win11 in a 200GB VM without TPM, and then transferred the
image across to a 1TB drive on a machine with TPM. Obviously at this point
it can't be storing keys in the TPM, and it doesn't know about the extra
800GB. I wouldn't recommend this as a general approach, but is one way to
prevent Windows getting hold of the extra space.

Theo

On 07/09/2021 in message <Oeh*qoDty@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> Theo wrote:

>Why can't you shrink with Bitlocker enabled?
>https://marc-wouts.medium.com/how-to-resize-bitlocker-and-luks-encrypted-partitions-b8ee70697edb
>(I haven't tried this)

I was trying to use Mini Tool Partition Wizard, I did find the Windows
tool but it uses expressions that are meaningless to me (as do a lot of
people nowadays!).

>The key might be stored in the TPM, meaning you don't need a password.
>
>If you're reinstalling, you could just partition the drive during
>installation
>and install to a smaller partition. I think Bitlocker should then keep its
>paws off the rest of the drive.

I did but used diskpart and went back to MBR so can now use Mini Tool
Partition Wizard. I am at the stage where Win 10 is so alien that I might
as well persevere with my MacBook Pro as a laptop, I use the Mac Mini for
GarageBand and MainStage and am very pleased with it.

Thanks!

--
Jeff Gaines Wiltshire UK
If you ever find something you like buy a lifetime supply because they
will stop making it