Your title is borked. Maybe edit that
It’s duplicated in case half of it is lost to Bitlocker
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.
ShitLocker
I had a small Win11 machine that I now have Ubuntu on. Win11 wouldn’t let me use the whole disk because of the BitLocker bullshit. I had to dig through the menus and disable it then wait hours for it to finish decrypting. Fuck Microsoft. I’m proud to say me and my GF dont have a single Microsoft product in our home, and I’m keeping that way.
Why couldn’t you just format the entire drive with the linux installer?
I could only format the free space not used by the windows partition.
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 0another method to try is this, instead of the registry entry:
start ms-cxh:localonlybut I haven’t tried that one yet.
I’ve fixed it by axing my bitlocker encrypted partition that contained my Pro version OS and just installed arch.
I love how Windows fix has terminal and GUI configurations mixed as an unholy concoction directly from the HQ.
Since when is Bitlocker required? None of my files are encrypted, and I’ve been using 11 since it came out.
Every retail PC I’ve seen with win11 has bitlocker enabled. Screwed one over as they forgot their password…
It automatically encrypts the drive only if admin has a Microsoft account (to backup the key on their cloud servers for easier
LEO accessdata recovery) and the PC is a prebuiltIf one of the condition is not met, the automatic ransomware isn’t enabled
Did you use Rufus? You can bypass Bitlocker. Or your machine does not have TPM 2.0 (which you can also bypass)…?
Yeah I used Rufus. Always do for every OS install. Explains it lol
Bitlocker encrypts your drive, not single files. Once the computer is booted up, it’s completely transparent to the user.
But my PC doesn’t even have a password. So how can my files be encrypted? I thought a password was manditory for file encryption to work.
You probably haven’t activate Bitlocker. Up until now it was optional with Windows. I would argue it isn’t necessary for a desktop computer at home, but you should seriously consider activating disk encryption for a laptop.
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.
SERVERS???
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.
What do you smoke exactly?
Yes! This happened to me when I turned off the ‘safe boot’ on a laptop via BIOS. It locked me out but I had never agreed to install Bitlocker in the first place, let alone know what key I was supposed to have. It was a total loss & I had to wipe the drive.
MS is hot trash.
The decryption key is saved in the Microsoft account, the error message explains that
I also almost got a panic attack when my Lenovo updated the bios and i was locked out
They’re making an increasingly compelling case for me to switch to Linux.
When are stockholders going to realize that the current Microsoft CEO is ruining Windows?
Kinda joking because in many ways windows is better than ever… but also making windows have non starter features enhances Linux adoption soooo
It seems like a buggy mess to me.
Better than ever? What? Bloated than ever maybe.
Better than ever in base usability as an operating system for the average person. And you can run wsl2 and have a full Linux environment too. It’s as close to a macOS user friendly experience as it has ever been without losing the windows identity.
Okay, I’ll give you wsl2, and the “average user experience” being better, but Windows is losing its identity with the IT and customization front. For both destroying the win32 control panel and locking down the shell so you can no longer customize it.
Somewhat ironically OSX recently added widgets to the desktop. Something Microsoft did years ago, removed it for no reason, and then added a flyout to tick almost the same check boxes.
As for me, the spike in resource usage and over saturation of “AI” was enough for me to decide to jump ship.
I’m currently attempting to daily drive Manjaro so maybe my opinion will change, but so far, it feels like home.
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’s valid to feel disappointed. Windows 7 was really stable.
My work still has a windows 7 machine with an uptime of something like 12 years.
Windows 7 will idle in the low megabytes. But why does 11 want to use 6-8 Gigs on idle for no good reason?
And it’s not like there’s that much difference between the two operating systems. One is just loaded up with electron wrappers and spyware
Windows can’t be updated in any meaningful way without being rebooted because Windows can’t overwrite a file that is in use. This makes it fairly unlikely for a machine to be up for 12 years.
Windows 7 also doesn’t “idle in the low MBs” It uses almost 1G at least at startup more if you have apps that auto start and like every OS it caches recently accessed files.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.