Grub: Bitlocker recovery activated on every boot

[DPGrev]

First of all, thank you for your work! This has helped immensely on getting ubuntu to work on my dell xps 9570.

I am trying to run an encrypted ubuntu dual boot next to windows with bitlocker and secure boot enabled. Ubuntu works as expected. However everytime I boot into windows from grub it asks for the bitlocker recovery key.

This behaviour does not happen when secure boot is disabled.
The behaviour is also mentioned in the following posts:
Superuser 1
Superuser 2

I am actively searching for a solution and thus I was wondering if anybody else got this setup working on their dell xps 9570?

[elben10]

Are you booting windows using the Ubuntu menu startup menu? I have the same problem, but it works if I press F12 when the Dell logo is shown and then choose windows.

[DPGrev]

I am booting windows using Grub2 (ubuntu menu startup). However, If I load the f12 menu and select the windows boot manager option it still boots into Grub2.

Edit: This happened because my bootmgr path was set to grub. I now set the bootmgr to windows using bcedit and am able to login to windows without any problem. I need to use f12 however to boot Ubuntu.

I am going to keep the f12 option as a backup. In the meantime, I will continue my search to get grub working without the bitlocker recovery screen showing everytime on boot.

[JackHack96]

I'm sorry I can't help with this. I'm running Ubuntu only and in unencrypted mode...

[Cz-Mootez]

Hi, did you find a solution ? I'am facing the exact same problem..

[JackHack96]

I'm sorry I didn't find any...

[vangilz]

I disabled Bitlocker before installing Ubuntu (as dual boot) to have more chances of recovery should things go wrong. Now that everything works, I have tried re-enabling Bitlocker in Windows. The option is, however, no longer available. I'm assuming that making my laptop dual boot somehow makes it unfit for Bitlocker?

Perhaps this is related to the problem others are having when Bitlocker is still enabled.

[DPGrev]

@Cz-Mootez I have not found a solution for this.

[ottowayne]

@DPGrev Can you elaborate on how you changed the default boot with bcdedit?

Something like this?
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path C:/Windows/System32/winload.efi

And you don't have to enter the recovery key anymore with this solution?

[giannislelekas]

@DPGrev I'm facing the same issue; have you come up with a solution?

[DPGrev]

@ottowayne I think i used \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi for windows 10.

@giannislelekas As of yet I have not found a solution and I am still using the bios boot menu if I want to access windows (F12).

However since the dell is a relatively powerfull laptop, I am also running a KVM in ubuntu which runs windows 10. Using the freerdp nightly builds github it works really well and stable.

So the need to switch to windows has been minimal.

[jungla88]

have you tried mokutils? It can enable/disable safe mode from linux.
It should be something like:
sudo mokutil --enable-validation
Boot windows and enter the key. Next boot on Windows should works normally.

[darxtrix]

I did a fresh dual boot install with windows 10 and ubuntu 18.04. I faced the same problem, I chose to disable the encryption completely for now and windows was able to boot from grub menu. I read somewhere decrypting drive and re-encrypting releases the key to TPM and solves the issue. Though I am happy with windows working in the unencrypted mode, for now, will try later on and post the results.

[xjuric29]

I disabled Bitlocker before installing Ubuntu (as dual boot) to have more chances of recovery should things go wrong. Now that everything works, I have tried re-enabling Bitlocker in Windows. The option is, however, no longer available. I'm assuming that making my laptop dual boot somehow makes it unfit for Bitlocker?

Perhaps this is related to the problem others are having when Bitlocker is still enabled.

Hello. This is the most funniest on the whole thing. What you described is another problem. Dell XPS laptop are destributed with Windows 10 Home. But the BitLocker feature is available only i Pro edition and this is some "magic" from Dell (https://www.dell.com/support/article/cz/cs/czbsd1/sln305842/xps-9365-and-xps-9360-appears-to-have-bitlocker-enabled-by-default?lang=en). When you once disable BitLocker I do not find another way to enable it back than upgrade to Pro version or reinstall system by recovery image.