TL;DR: bitlocker does not like grub

Full story:

Months ago I installed fedora on my desktop, dual booting Windows 11.

In all this time I never had the need to boot into windows. I remembered that it worked fine after install, good, and then I forgot about that.

Today I needed a specific windows only software, so at grub I chose the microsoft bootloader and… BITLOCKER.

Huh? Bitlocker? Me? What? Searched frantically for that decryption password in my keepass, did not find. What?? How???

After a few minutes staring at that screen I thought, ok let’s just wipe that shit and reclaim the space. I went back to linux, opened the partition manager, then remembered that i had something important in single copy over there. Noooooo

Went back to the boot screen to try again, still failed password.

Then I notice the error:

e_fve_pcr_mismatch

that mismatch lets me think that maybe I had something wrong in my booting.

I try to put windows first in the bios and it works! WHAT THE…???

So, if i put linux first, then launch windows from grub, bitlocker takes the windows partition under ransom, i can only access if windows is first. And of course in windows 11 x64 is no longer possible add linux partitions in their boot manager (previously it was possible)

Incompetence or maliciousness?

  • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 day ago

    Don’t pay the guys on G2A for keys - they’re just reselling stolen corporate MAK keys. They’re also not legal to the terms of the EULA, so it’s not a ‘genuine copy’ for the buyer either - you may as well just use Massgrave instead of funding crooks.

    To add to your list of options: you can also just leave it unactivated forever.

    It’ll whine about requiring activation with a ''Activate Windows. Go to Settings to activate Windows" message overlaying the bottom right corner of the screen - but that’s it, functionality is otherwise 99% unaffected (you can’t change wallpaper… Oh no). For Windows 10 it will now stop offering updates though - same as any standard Win10 copy, so I’d again recommend the Massgrave Dev route to keep the updates coming a few more years.