940916 - Access Denied error accessing BitLocker encrypted fixed drive

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BitLocker was turned on on my previous Windows 7. It was working properly until I had to change my Windows 7 and reinstall it on another drive, this time SSD instead of HDD. After installing Windows 7, I got "Access Denied" error message when i went to unlock the drive. The password was correct and the drive could unlock, but access was denied. I tried the built-in Administrator account and found that it had not this problem. It could access the contents of the drive and unlock. This was while my account was also an administrator of the new Windows. So, I decided to rename login name of the built-in Administrator account to my own and use it instead of my own account. This seemed that resolved the problem. Then, I decided to upgrade this Windows to 10. Now, after upgrading, I can't access the drive with the built-in Administrator account too!

Notes:
1. In my previous Windows which I could see the contents of the drive, I was seeing a tiny lock icon on the root folders (the folders which were located on the root of the drive), while this didn't appear on their sub-folders. What is that?
2. Now and before upgrading, I might and may access the contents of the drive by using Total Commander. This seems the only way. It can't access and then brings up a dialog and asks for using administrative rights. If I click the button, it may show the contents! why? I'm the administrator already!
3. Issues like permissions in security or ownership seem not to be applicable, since they're set to both System and Administrators which I think that they're not Windows dependent and use the same GUID around all Windows.

Posted 7-Dec-15 3:26am

ilostmyid2

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F-ES Sitecore 7-Dec-15 9:41am

You probably just need to take ownership of all the files. Remember that names like "administrator" are just token pieces of text, it is the GUID of the account that is attached to the access rights so the administrator account on two different domains\installs have two different GUIDs despite both being called administrator.

Dave Kreskowiak 7-Dec-15 9:48am

It's not the GUID of the account. You're talking about the SID.

ilostmyid2 7-Dec-15 12:56pm

thx 4 replies
SID i meant, which is indeed a Globally Unique IDentifier.
when u install Office, for example, you see that its registry entries for CLSID's are the same in all machines. i expect the built-in Administrator has the same SID in all machines. am i right?
i changed all files and folder's permissions with no success.
if the problem is file-system related, even total commander should not be able to open items too.

ilostmyid2 7-Dec-15 16:03pm

oh i found that it was not dependent to BitLocker at all!
it was a security issue.
when i referred to security settings i found that the same users (Administrator and System) are granted to access the content of the hard disk. this shows that they use the same SID's. but it couldn't show the owner. i changed it to "Administrators". but this didn't solve the problem. the only thing which caused the content to get browsable and solved the problem was that i change owner to "Everyone"! but why?

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ilostmyid2 · Answer 1 · 2015-12-07T16:01:00

Solution 1

it was a security issue, not a bitlocker issue.

Posted 7-Dec-15 16:01pm

ilostmyid2