Windows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft's forcedWindows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft's forced BitLocker encryption
Windows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft's forced BitLocker encryption
Your title is borked. Maybe edit that
Since when is Bitlocker required? None of my files are encrypted, and I've been using 11 since it came out.
Bitlocker encrypts your drive, not single files. Once the computer is booted up, it's completely transparent to the user.
Every retail PC I've seen with win11 has bitlocker enabled. Screwed one over as they forgot their password...
I am LITERALLY in the process of migrating my servers to my new NixOS server after months of prep work. This couldn't have been more timely lol Funniest part is, I just did my own TPM based encryption on my drives.
That's extraordinary, even for Microsoft.
If you're on Win 11 Pro, up to 23H2, follow these steps to prevent 24H2:
win+R, type GPEDIT.MSC, press enter Locate "Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update\Manage updates offered from Windows Update\Select the target feature update version"
Now click the "Enabled" button, type "Windows 11" in the first prompt and "23H2" in the second prompt and click "Apply"
That will prevent 24H2 from being downloaded and installed. When they've fixed this and the "Recall" mess, you can go back and undo the setting.
You can still do the "bypassnro" thing, it's just a script that's been removed. All it did was write a registry entry and reboot. This is the registry key entry - you can still press shift-F10 at the same point and type this manually:
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f shutdown /r /t 0
another method to try is this, instead of the registry entry:
start ms-cxh:localonly
but I haven't tried that one yet.
I love how Windows fix has terminal and GUI configurations mixed as an unholy concoction directly from the HQ.
Windows is malware.
I remember when Linux users used to say that, but it turns out they were right.
I'm glad I leaved that cursed OS behind.
I'm of the opinion that encryption based security should be compartmentalized. IE, an encrypted folder, or "safe" app. Safes in housing are already a concept that is already commonly known so it would be natural to extend a safe into the digital realm. This would also help in the idea that safes are locked with a key, so if the user loses their keys, whatever is inside the safe, might as well be lost.
Now if EVERYTHING is a safe, (always on encryption). People will never known the difference. Its a dangerous type of security that is likely to be more a loss than a benefit.
For most folks they could just write down their encryption passphrase in a secure location with the rest of their papers since 99.9% of the risk is thieves stealing their laptops. For most folks the biggest secure item they have is the one they use constantly their browser and all the passwords it stores to all their services. You know the thing they use constantly.
A compartmentalized approach makes sense when the laptop contains really vulnerable data like laptops which have been stolen with bunches of client data on it or a journalists communication with confidential sources etc etc. In that case you STILL want to encrypt the whole thing but you want to separately encrypt the really important stuff with a different key so that every time you open your laptop to watch cat videos on youtube you aren't also unlocking all the data you will have to tell your companies users you lost.
You are arguing for selective encryption, but I can't really find any technical argument in your comment.
Whether we are speaking of encryption at transit or rest, there's a general consensus that encrypting everything is best in every way except possibly performance for select cases.
For example, it allows hiding (meta)data about the really important bits, and with computers it's really difficult to tell which bits of (meta)data could be combined to abuse. Tampering is a consideration as well.
The bot that posted this is not programmed to edit typos.
Really wish we didn't have bots posting at all
HEY, @moe90@feddit.nl
FIX YOUR FUCKING TITLE lazy ass
don't you mean, "FIX YOUR FUCKING TITLEFIX YOUR TITLE FUCKING lazy ass"
😂😂
Dude has a stutter be cool
You can merge the choices and resolve the conflict: Microsoft users are dumb.
Thanks?
Clearly you've never used a Mac. It wasn't until 2024 that you could snap windows, they have a built in dark mode but the word processor that ships with their computer requires you to use a dark page template if you want black background/white text, and lord forgive you if you want to take a screenshot.
Found the Linux user.
Not Arc though, they would have said so
If they are still using windows, their privacy and data safety was never of importance to them, anyway.
Or just get the data back from the backups they made.
Data privacy != Documents/data on hard disk
If I have documents on my harddisk, they are private. If a windows 11 user has documents on their harddisk, they are not.
I had a stroke reading the thread title.
The lost data is appearing inThe lost data is appearing in this thread.
@moe90@feddit.nl clearly doesn't give a shit. They're a serial poster.
It has too much data
new form of encryption just dropped
Fix that title gore please
Windows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft's forcedWindows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft's forced BitLocker encryption
I mean, it's kind of not incorrect:
Windows 11 users reportedly losing data due to Microsoft’s forced Windows 11
Tagging OP @moe90@feddit.nl until they quit being a lazy bitch and actually fix their title.
Surprise, surprise.
Forcing security measures onto someone who doesn't understand them or know how to recover their data if something goes wrong is a bad idea.
It tech here. Yup sure does. For enterprise customers it gets saved in active directory anyway. But for home users, no way. For new devices I always create a local account and turn off bitlocker if it happens to be enabled. Most people don't remember their email password, some don't even remember their email address. So many times I've had to remove the drive of a dead PC or laptop and copy all their files off of it, because people just don't make backups. But already happenend a few times now that a private customer got suckered into making a Microsoft account by one of those full screen pop ups. Probably set it up with an E-Mail some relative of theirs created just so they can download stuff of their Phones App store. And all their stuff just gets automatically encrypted. Bye Bye all the photos you had taken for the last 10 years. Thanks Microsoft.
I just got bit in the ass by bitlocker when my laptop motherboard died. I had to do the unsafe bootloader hack to get back into the drive.
Why isn't this a thing for me? Because I skipped MS account creation? So many Win11 issues I read about on here and I get almost none with my vanilla ISO install.
Maybe it's a home vs. pro thing? On the pro version you don't even to do any trickery in the command prompt or the registry. You just choose "join a domain", create a local account. You don't actually have to join a domain.
I read the article but am not smarter than before. I heard some time ago that windows does encrypt the drive but you need an active online account and the key will be saved online. So do people forget their online passwords and methods to recover that said account? I dont like m$ and am using linux, but people loosing their passwords, being uninformed about their systems and dont so backups is not the direct fault of the operating system.
Setting up encryption has previously been an affirmative step wherein the user opted into being unable to access their data if they lose their password. Because of this users have the opportunity to back up their recovery key you know after they even learn what one is.
Having it happen on upgrade to an existing machine is inherently confusing and its easy to see how it could lead to data loss.
Lose access to your MS account = lose your data forever. No warnings, no second chances. Many people learn about BitLocker the first time it locks them out.
It seems like they just got locked out of their Microsoft account (which stores the bitlocker key). Idk why they can't just reset their password or if this article talks about the times where people couldn't do that due to missing email access or maybe resetting the password deletes the bitlocker keys?
Either way though, the problem is that Microsoft is forcing encryption on everyone and not properly educating them on the consequences like "Backup your decryption key if you care about the data" in a way a normal user actually listens to.
you need an active online account and the key will be saved online
Is there a legit reason for this? Why can't they just encrypt the data with the password used to access the online account?
Just did a fresh win 11 install . In order to update bios before installing Linux. Refused to let me install without wifi but a quick googling and a command prompt later it was possible to work around easily
I helped my sister deal with this. Bitlocker activated itself, the keys were in her account which she had access to. She had done everything properly but nothing worked to resolve it.
There’s countless forum posts on it since about 2021 if you go looking for it. None of the recovery processes worked so I reformatted and enabled bitlocker at the start. Next time I visit, she’s getting Linux Mint.
Fuck Microsoft. End users shouldn’t be expected to troubleshoot like that.
Bitlocker can be turned on without having an account on device iirc.
Correct, can be turned on and it will provide you the key to be saved as a file if I recall
Windows is ransomware now
Nailed it, that is how ransomware works.
in Italian gangster voice "Hey Buddy, give me your information, fair price for security, eh?, What? Do you not trust me? Buddy, you may lose your information, we wouldn't want that, right?, just make an account I'll handle the rest"
When are stockholders going to realize that the current Microsoft CEO is ruining Windows?
They know, read their yearly financial reports. They said for a decade that Windows is not only not profitable, there's no future for it. Microsoft for several years now is a company that sells cloud and opensource services(Linux, Github, etc).
Kinda joking because in many ways windows is better than ever… but also making windows have non starter features enhances Linux adoption soooo
I'm getting daily or near daily BSODs since switch back from Debian. I was okay with Vista and 8, and maybe I'm just getting crankier as I get older, but I definitely am not a fan of the current direction Windows is taking.
It seems like a buggy mess to me.
Better than ever? What? Bloated than ever maybe.
I've decided to switch to Linux come october. I have some reasons I wanna wait as long as I can, but come october I'm leaving Windows behind.
I've decided to switch my gaming PC to Linux...a few weeks ago.
No ragrets. My games run faster, I no longer need extra shit to make Windows work the way I want it to work, and I can remote into it however I want without running into artificial roadblocks.
Get started early so you have time to acclimate and address issues. You are going to hate it if you urgently need your computer for something and something unexpected happens.
If you're new to Linux, I suggest at the very least starting to learn now. If you have a spare device you can install it on, an old laptop or something, dual boot on your existing machine or use Virtualbox...Start learning now, while you still consider Windows an option.
My own journey to the Linux platform included several instances of the following scenario:
I need to get something done. It's simple, in Windows 7 I know how to do it in seconds. It's so simple that I don't know the words for it, just the thing to click to do it. But it doesn't work that way in Linux, even the vocabulary is different, and you need this done right now because you're working on something and you don't have time to stop and learn this right now.
Boot into Windows, get your job done and turned in. Then look up how to do it in Linux later. Eventually you stop hitting that wall.
You've decided you have seven months. I'd get to it.
Yeah it can happen, when you force people without their consent encrypting their data.
Isn't that what Iphone and Android already do?
One major difference is that it is so much easier to lock yourself out of the desktop TPM chip compared to mobile device security chips because they're not tightly coupled.
Huh .. I never noticed. Probably because my phone OS never failed to boot, requiring me to pull data off the HDD directly.
The only phone manufacture that does that is Google with pixel. Any other phone is for my knowledge either "weakly" encrypted or not at all.
Still your Mobile OS isnt just upgrading and encrypting your SD card and main drive. Thats the point.
Android I think just uses same credentials you use to unlock account, at least I am not aware of any recovery key. And you are prompted for credentials from time to time so it is harder to forget. I use fingerprint as main unlock + pattern and I have to enter pattern roughly once a week I think.
On Windows if you set up Windows Hello (fingerprint or PIN usually), you are not reminded to enter password afterwards so eventually you can forget it. And if you do not know your password and cannot recover account, you will not be able to retrieve BitLocker recovery key. So fix to this problem could be another annoyance to users if it would be implemented as Android does it.
Different threat model and usage scenario. See the spilled milk comment.
Most people don't have anything of importance on their phones. And the tuning options are almost absent on phones, so it is less problematic bug-wise.
Something broke.
I blame bitlocker.
I'm in favor of a heavy handed push towards encryption, I think most people don't realize how important this is (now more than ever), but windows should be guiding and educating on this not requiring, and it should have absolutely nothing to do with an email address or online account.
On a home PC, what for? The only data that really matters to be encrypted is my keepass database file. Giving the option is fine but I don't think it should done without asking the user to choose.
I saw this problem coming a mile away
Must have been a massive monitor.
All of the data I actually care about is stored on a NAS and backed up in triplicate. The only data actually on my PC are program files.
I can’t access my home server at all right now. I needed a distraction from all the bullshit in the world so I intentionally made it unstable so I would always have a puzzle to solve. I have a backup but I only use it when the puzzle breaks. That’s the rule I made for myself.
This distraction certainly delivers.
ShitLocker
I didn't expect Windows to become THAT shit. Well it's good for Linux I guess.
hearing about this was my final straw, thank god
How are these people losing access to their MS accounts on their computers?
Step one, be forced to create a Microsoft account.
Step two, create the account with a password you are SURE you remember
Step three, create a PIN so you never have to enter your password
Step four, forget your password
Most likely this is the #1 reason. When Passkeys will become more popular, that will be another problem for regular users unless there is an easy account recovery option.
Another possibility could be switching to local account and deleting MS account, but I would imagine that is more rare and most people would just abandon account. Then it can become the same issue with forgotten password though.
I guess there is a password recovery feature with Microsoft accounts, but people don't remember which email they signed up with?
Maybe it would help to read the initial reddit thread and not this article.
You can still force local account. Edit: nevermind, first sentence of the article:
Earlier today, we published an article regarding Microsoft's recent removal of the BYPASSNRO script and how it has irked Windows 11 users
Well, fuck.
On setup: Shift + F10 -> click into the CMD window (it opens unfocused)
<>
cd oobe bypassnro
And do not connect to network until you finish setup.
Disabling auto updates was also very simple and intuitive. Couldn't be easier.
Meta + R -> Type gpedit.msc and press enter -> On left click Administrative templates -> All settings -> Configure Automatic Updates -> Select option 2, Enabled and Apply
All the time, then people get ran around in circles, are given a too technical explanation and give up more often than not.
The encryption is not inherently a bad thing, but forcing people into account creation is where the trouble starts. With piss-poor customer support as the cherry on top, this should never be allowed.
I'd say it's a bad thing because it's the wrong threat model as a default.
More home users are in scenarios like "I spilled a can of Diet Sprite into my laptop, can someone yank the SSD and recover my cat pictures" than "Someone stole my laptop and has physical access to state secrets that Hegseth has yet to blurt on Twitch chat". Encryption makes the first scenario a lot harder to easily recover from, and people with explicit high security needs should opt into it or have organization-managed configs.
