Back in January Microsoft encrypted all my hard drives without saying anything. I was playing around with a dual boot yesterday and somehow aggravated Secureboot. So my C: panicked and required a 40 character key to unlock.
Your key is backed up to the Microsoft account associated with your install. Which is considerate to the hackers. (and saved me from a re-install) But if you’ve got an unactivated copy, local account, or don’t know your M$ account credentials, your boned.
Control Panel > System Security > Bitlocker Encryption.
BTW, I was aware that M$ was doing this and even made fun of the effected users. Karma.
But how is that relevant to your ‘Fuck Microsoft’ if he knowingly encrypted his device, which is how you make it sound?
I’ve enabled FDE on one of my Linux devices, I’ve already had to mount the filesystem in a rescue environment once because a failed update caused the system to be unable to boot. I would also have been hosed if I had lost the encryption key. Ok not really, because that’s what backups are for, but you hopefully get the point.
From what I gather though other memes, It looks like Windows 11 is enabling Bitlocker by default.