G
Guest
Well actually I did, but I wouldn't have done without Bitlocker. And its
broke really bad; I suppose that when something is as secure as Bitlocker,
when it breaks its gonna break properly otherwise its not really doing its
job is it. And how properly has it broken it? Well, my computer can no
longer find its hard disk - that's how bad it is.
Here's how it happened...
1) I have Ultimate, so ran the Bitlocker setup (Toshiba M400). During the
process it set up a new drive, "S" with a couple of Gig leaving my "C" drive
with its 78 Gig or there abouts.
2) Ran TPM from the BIOS and switched Bitlocker on, but as per my earlier
topic, couldn't get it to properly work even with the latest BIOS. My
experience was similar to the one found by Daniel Robinson -
http://labs.itweek.co.uk/2006/11/vista_bitlocker.html (even though his is a
Dell)
3) So decided to switch off TPM and Bitlocker, which went fine. Then I went
into a Disk Management Console (found under the Computer Management Console)
and this is where it went horribly wrong.
4) I wanted to reclaim the disk space "S" was taking up, so tried to delete
the volume, but clever computer wouldn't let me because it was the "Active
Partition". So that's easily sorted isn't it, set "C" to the active
partition - no problem - now right click the "S" volume and delete it.
Ignore the little warning that cropped up (okay maybe I should have read it)
click OK, then reboot and now what ...
5) Windows doesn't load. Oh well, that's a nuisance I'll have to reinstall
Vista which is a bit of a pain, because it means reinstalling XP first since
I purchased the upgrade version of Ultimate. Only XP won't find a hard
drive. Now I start to sweat and shake. Put the Vista disk in and ask it to
repair my computer - what's the message? "Err, I can't find a Hard Drive,
are you sure you have one David?" Yes, Yes Yes.
6) I know lets try any of my windows XP disks ... nope none of them can't
find a hard drive.
7) Finally phone one of my senior developers (I'm supposed to be an IT
Manager you know). Listen to him giggle down the phone and hear him mutter
something about lost the master boot record, so perhaps on Monday he can
install Linux so that they can completely trash the hard drive and then we
can start again. About his only hope is that my BIOS can still see an 80 Gig
hard drive so it should be possible.
Oh well that's my weekend pretty much wrecked, and I suppose I'll have to
endure Tablet withdrawal symptoms. Wait a minute ... unless one of you good
people has any idea?
David L.
UPDATE:
Well - 6 hours later (and 3 hours sleep later) and things haven't improved
much.
Someone suggested doing fdisk from DSL Linux, but my lack of knowledge of
all thing Linux, meant that although I managed to boot froma Linux CD as much
as I tried I couldn't get fdisk -l to give me back anything. But then maybe
I hadn't got a root terminal, etc, etc. Of course equally, maybe fdisk
didn't work because the hard drive is well and truly trashed.
So found a couple of bootable CD iso's on the web and felt more comfortable
with these. One is made by LSoft which had a couple of free utilities. One
of these is KillDisk designed to wipe everything from the disk. It did say
that the disk will be still usable but you'd need a utility to create
partitions, format drive etc, etc. using something like fdisk. So left it to
do its work which took a couple of hours.
After that I burned PartitionLogic iso to disk which builds partitions, etc.
and guess what ... it doesn't find any hard drives to create, shrink, delete
partitions on.
If the boys on Monday who know what they're doing can't find my disk (I'm
sure its here somewhere), then I guess it really is a new hard drive!
Oh well.
broke really bad; I suppose that when something is as secure as Bitlocker,
when it breaks its gonna break properly otherwise its not really doing its
job is it. And how properly has it broken it? Well, my computer can no
longer find its hard disk - that's how bad it is.
Here's how it happened...
1) I have Ultimate, so ran the Bitlocker setup (Toshiba M400). During the
process it set up a new drive, "S" with a couple of Gig leaving my "C" drive
with its 78 Gig or there abouts.
2) Ran TPM from the BIOS and switched Bitlocker on, but as per my earlier
topic, couldn't get it to properly work even with the latest BIOS. My
experience was similar to the one found by Daniel Robinson -
http://labs.itweek.co.uk/2006/11/vista_bitlocker.html (even though his is a
Dell)
3) So decided to switch off TPM and Bitlocker, which went fine. Then I went
into a Disk Management Console (found under the Computer Management Console)
and this is where it went horribly wrong.
4) I wanted to reclaim the disk space "S" was taking up, so tried to delete
the volume, but clever computer wouldn't let me because it was the "Active
Partition". So that's easily sorted isn't it, set "C" to the active
partition - no problem - now right click the "S" volume and delete it.
Ignore the little warning that cropped up (okay maybe I should have read it)
click OK, then reboot and now what ...
5) Windows doesn't load. Oh well, that's a nuisance I'll have to reinstall
Vista which is a bit of a pain, because it means reinstalling XP first since
I purchased the upgrade version of Ultimate. Only XP won't find a hard
drive. Now I start to sweat and shake. Put the Vista disk in and ask it to
repair my computer - what's the message? "Err, I can't find a Hard Drive,
are you sure you have one David?" Yes, Yes Yes.
6) I know lets try any of my windows XP disks ... nope none of them can't
find a hard drive.
7) Finally phone one of my senior developers (I'm supposed to be an IT
Manager you know). Listen to him giggle down the phone and hear him mutter
something about lost the master boot record, so perhaps on Monday he can
install Linux so that they can completely trash the hard drive and then we
can start again. About his only hope is that my BIOS can still see an 80 Gig
hard drive so it should be possible.
Oh well that's my weekend pretty much wrecked, and I suppose I'll have to
endure Tablet withdrawal symptoms. Wait a minute ... unless one of you good
people has any idea?
David L.
UPDATE:
Well - 6 hours later (and 3 hours sleep later) and things haven't improved
much.
Someone suggested doing fdisk from DSL Linux, but my lack of knowledge of
all thing Linux, meant that although I managed to boot froma Linux CD as much
as I tried I couldn't get fdisk -l to give me back anything. But then maybe
I hadn't got a root terminal, etc, etc. Of course equally, maybe fdisk
didn't work because the hard drive is well and truly trashed.
So found a couple of bootable CD iso's on the web and felt more comfortable
with these. One is made by LSoft which had a couple of free utilities. One
of these is KillDisk designed to wipe everything from the disk. It did say
that the disk will be still usable but you'd need a utility to create
partitions, format drive etc, etc. using something like fdisk. So left it to
do its work which took a couple of hours.
After that I burned PartitionLogic iso to disk which builds partitions, etc.
and guess what ... it doesn't find any hard drives to create, shrink, delete
partitions on.
If the boys on Monday who know what they're doing can't find my disk (I'm
sure its here somewhere), then I guess it really is a new hard drive!
Oh well.