PA pro reports "No partition found" whilst correctly listing all partitions: bitlocker suspected

Mike163

Hello.
PA Pro Partition Recovery Wizard thinks all my partitions are unformatted even when run under win 10, where the main PA window knows they are 'Bitlocker Encrypted'.  Logged on to Win10, all five visible partitions can be accessed.  Under Safe CMD, after bitlocker recovery key for C:, all visible partitions can be accessed.  I read that PA is Bitlocker compatible: how do I inform PA of that?
Thanks in advance for any help,
Mike

Some more information.
I'm trying to recover a laptop broken by OneDrive.  Win10 can't complete any command, e.g., Win-E never gets to the end of the blue 'indexing' sweeping bar.  I think OD gathered up files from multiple partitions on a 1Tb SSD and tried to write them all back, thus exceeding the available disk space.
Chkdsk from safe CMD finds no lost or orphaned clusters or files on any partition: but reported the wrong labels vs. drives.  Safe CMD thinks I have C/D/E/F/G, but the prior labels were C/P/G/F/W.  Partition Recovery Wizard correctly finds C/P/G/F/W but reports all as 'Unformatted' except hidden *system, and *Windows RE, from where I think it is running.
To get to safe CMD I must enter a bitlocker key for C:, after which it can access all the partitions even if the identifier is wrong.  PA Recovery Wizard doesn't ask for a BL key, sees every visible partition as empty, has has no partitions to select: which is probably a good thing as it thinks they are all empty.  From within Win10, PA sees the SSD, all partitions with correct labels, but without usage, instead showing blank with the description 'Bitlocker Encrypted'.  Partition Recovery Wizard starts in the same place as WIn10 but exchanges 'Bitlocker' for 'Unformatted', with the same result: 'No partitions found'.

aiArtisan

Screenshots please.

Mike163

Par

PA correctly identifies partions and the bitlocker encryption but partition recovery wizard fails to find any partitions and lists partitions as unformatted.

Reboot into Safe CMD prompt requires BL key for C:, which then unlocks all partitions.

Partition identifier letters have been reset: C/P/G/F/W are re-labelled C/D/E/F/G.  'manage-bde -protectors -get <DRIVE>' shows the new mapping to be C>C, D>P, F>F, E>G, G>W.

Windows Disk Management correctly identifies partitions.

CMD under Win10 correctly identifies partitions.

Win10 is currently unable to complete anything that involves Explorer, whereas 3rd party Apps like AceU, PA, Everything Search Engine are able to see all the drives and list content.  Safe CMD is able to access all the partitions under the re-mapped letters.  Maybe Safe CMD comes in with none and allocates them each time?  This seems the easier problem to fix, but with PA not able to decrpt even from within Windows, it seems unable to do anything.  I have Aomei BU verified partition images, but I'm lothe to remap drive letters within Safe CMD in the hope that might help.

What do I do next?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

aiArtisan

Windows drive letter are fluid, and can change anytime without hurting anything. The OS assigns drive letters during each boot. You can also manually change drive letter in PA, or Diskpart, but you dont need to.

So, I understand you are pointing out some problems. Could you please repeat what is your goal here? If you solved all these problems, what would you want in the end?

Mike163

I want to return the laptop to the function it had before OneDrive knobbled it. Explorer is overloaded by I think the number of files it is trying to index or a conflict between apparent space and available space: various requests don't complete, windows content or context menu. I'd like 'Run as Administrator' to again be working from start menu and Win-R commands. I can't unwind OneDrive without admin control.

aiArtisan

"OneDrive knobbled it"

Could you please elaborate further?

Have you tried to create a new Windows user account on the same Windows installation? That can solve issues in some cases. Don't forget to make the new user an Administrator.

Mike163

I'm folder centric so I have my content organised by year on drive P:. Faced with the root OD folder request of 'keep a copy on my local device', OD moved its own choice of Documents and Pictures underneath C:\Users\[me]\OneDrive \Documents or \Pictures plus \Desktop, copied the contents to the cloud, then attempted to write the entire collection back to C: where there was insufficient space. Despite C:\Users\[me]\OneDrive existing, I'm signed out and that seems to result in it not showing to Ace Utilities. The duplicates are easiest to see in Desktop, where '- copy' is likely the file with content, whilst the original file fails to open. Under \Documents is \Recovered with a raft of files with Chkdsk names like File001.xtn as chkdsk clearly did find a whole bunch of orphaned files, reported none in the CMD window, and was unable to write the logfile. So knobbled is an understatement.

admin

@Mike163, Partition Recovery feature currently can't support Bitlocker encrypted Partitions. Generally, the Partition Recovery feature is used to search and recover lost/deleted partitions. Based on your description, it seems that you only lost some files/folders from the existing partition, right? If yes, maybe you can try data recovery feature. And, you might need to close Bitlocker and then try to scan and recover data.