RE: BitLocker Post OS-Install - Boot & Partition Considerations

I wrote up some instructions for a little more user-friendly process that
worked for me:

http://www.vistaclues.com/setup-bitl...lling-windows/

....just while we wait for the tool from the MS guys.

"Banquo" wrote:

> This post was written to help anyone trying to implement BitLocker without
> having the required partition configuration.
>
> During the initial Vista (6000) install I did not take the default
> recommended partitions and part sizes. Chalk it up to inexperience. Anyway on
> my laptop I created a single 40GB partition for the boot/system. After
> discovering more about Vista, CBT first look, etc . . . I wanted to enable
> the Bitlocker feature. My (DELL B130) does not have a TPM chip but MS has a
> workaround using a USB key, easy enough.
>
> The real discovery, and reason for this post, is to reveal some learned
> changes in the bootloader and startup of Vista. Other Windows Live searches
> resulted in some supporting information as well.
>
> To create the partition requirements of the BitLocker feature, I used
> (diskmgmt.msc now allows for) the "shrinking" partion on the fly feature.
> With the newly freed space I created an (NTFS) 1.5GB partition and I made it
> the active partition for the system. Next, to make the new 1.5GB active
> partition "bootable" 2 files were required - c:\bootmgr and C:\Boot\BCD (need
> to access this file while Vista is shutdown - locked during OS runtime). I
> used WinPE for the BCD file copy.
>
> That was it. Vista now had the required partition config for BitLocker and
> is bootable. I followed the rest of the MS article for deployment of the BL
> feature w/o TPM HW.
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/win...4d762cf31.mspx
>
>
> It is working like a charm.