G
Guest
This post was written to help anyone trying to implement BitLocker without
having the required partition configuration.
During the initial Vista (6000) install I did not take the default
recommended partitions and part sizes. Chalk it up to inexperience. Anyway on
my laptop I created a single 40GB partition for the boot/system. After
discovering more about Vista, CBT first look, etc . . . I wanted to enable
the Bitlocker feature. My (DELL B130) does not have a TPM chip but MS has a
workaround using a USB key, easy enough.
The real discovery, and reason for this post, is to reveal some learned
changes in the bootloader and startup of Vista. Other Windows Live searches
resulted in some supporting information as well.
To create the partition requirements of the BitLocker feature, I used
(diskmgmt.msc now allows for) the "shrinking" partion on the fly feature.
With the newly freed space I created an (NTFS) 1.5GB partition and I made it
the active partition for the system. Next, to make the new 1.5GB active
partition "bootable" 2 files were required - c:\bootmgr and C:\Boot\BCD (need
to access this file while Vista is shutdown - locked during OS runtime). I
used WinPE for the BCD file copy.
That was it. Vista now had the required partition config for BitLocker and
is bootable. I followed the rest of the MS article for deployment of the BL
feature w/o TPM HW.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx
It is working like a charm.
having the required partition configuration.
During the initial Vista (6000) install I did not take the default
recommended partitions and part sizes. Chalk it up to inexperience. Anyway on
my laptop I created a single 40GB partition for the boot/system. After
discovering more about Vista, CBT first look, etc . . . I wanted to enable
the Bitlocker feature. My (DELL B130) does not have a TPM chip but MS has a
workaround using a USB key, easy enough.
The real discovery, and reason for this post, is to reveal some learned
changes in the bootloader and startup of Vista. Other Windows Live searches
resulted in some supporting information as well.
To create the partition requirements of the BitLocker feature, I used
(diskmgmt.msc now allows for) the "shrinking" partion on the fly feature.
With the newly freed space I created an (NTFS) 1.5GB partition and I made it
the active partition for the system. Next, to make the new 1.5GB active
partition "bootable" 2 files were required - c:\bootmgr and C:\Boot\BCD (need
to access this file while Vista is shutdown - locked during OS runtime). I
used WinPE for the BCD file copy.
That was it. Vista now had the required partition config for BitLocker and
is bootable. I followed the rest of the MS article for deployment of the BL
feature w/o TPM HW.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx
It is working like a charm.