File History Windows 10

[alexsmith2709]

I have a customer who had a crash, blue screen with an inaccessible boot volume error that looked to be caused by an update. Normally this wouldnt be too much of an issue, apart from this computer had bitlocker turned on and guess what, they dont know the password/recovery key!

He had a backup on an external drive which he has supplied, it is from using File History. I have wiped the drive and reinstalled windows, but now to restore his backup i have selected the "previous file history backup" and turned on file history, but in the restore personal files section it still says file history is turned off. Does anyone have any ideas before i copy and paste these files back "the old fashioned way"?

I have rebooted the machine twice with no change.

 

[britechguy]

I have wiped the drive and reinstalled windows, . . .

Which, from the perspective of File History, means that the File History drive you have is as though it originated from another machine.

See:

How to correctly use File History to transfer data files to a new Windows 10 installation

 

[nlinecomputers]

I hope you set a copy of his old drive aside. Likely his BitLocker key is stored in his Microsoft Account.

 

[britechguy]

I hope you set a copy of his old drive aside. Likely his BitLocker key is stored in his Microsoft Account.

This also brings up the question, at least for me, as to whether File History file backups taken under a system that had BitLocker active are also encrypted themselves, and will require the key to unlock.

I have grown to despise, with a burning passion, the fad that is using drive encryption one each and every drive, no matter how trivial the matter stored on same happens to be. The number of "encryption gone bad" situations where data was lost where it very well may not have otherwise been (and this would be one potential example) is legion.

If I could stamp that fad, along with the one that promulgates the idea that everyone must use a VPN always, I'd be a happy camper.

 

[alexsmith2709]

@britechguy i tried those instructions, but it didnt work, i noticed after posting this that there is an error 200 in the event viewer which is about not being able to start the backup cycle.
The backup was not encrypted, i tested it on my machine to see if i could access files before i started any work. I could access the files without any issue.
He didnt actually want the encryption, but he is a mortage advisor so has to. the fact the backup was not encrypted was a good thing in this case, but doesnt make any sense from his work viewpoint. I hate encryption too, particularly on drives that dont need it, but in this case i understand why it was (possibly) needed. I have warned him, if he is made to turn on bitlocker or any other encryption again to make sure he has a copy of the password.

@nlinecomputers I did clone his drive before doing anything. He doesnt have (or doesnt know) a microsoft account as that was my 2nd thing to try after asking him to look for the recovery key/password.

As he needed to be back up and running i manually copied across all the files from the file history backup and said he will need to go through and delete the older file copies and rename files himself and that was the best i could do, but as i do still have a clone of his drive if i (you guys) had any ideas in the next few days i would try and provide a better solution.

 

[Haole Boy]

He doesnt have (or doesnt know) a microsoft account

Since your MS account username is an email address or phone number, have him go to https://login.live.com/ and put in his email address and see if he can do the forgot password stuff. It can be a PITA, but I've had to do it a couple of times for my customers.

Harry Z

 

[alexsmith2709]

Since your MS account username is an email address or phone number, have him go to https://login.live.com/ and put in his email address and see if he can do the forgot password stuff. It can be a PITA, but I've had to do it a couple of times for my customers.

Harry Z

I did that, at least the email address i know for him didnt have an account associated with it