How to disable, turn off, remove Bitlocker drive encryption in Windows 10/8/7?

Posted by Tim to Bitlocker Recovery Tips on October 22th, 2018

This article will introduce five solutions to disable, turn off, remove Bitlocker drive encryption in Windows 10:

Solution 1: Disable Bitlocker from Control Panel

If you are using Windows 10 Home edition, go to solution 2 to turn off Bitlocker encryption on that drive.

Step 1: Open the Search bar and type Control Panel.

Step 2: Double-click Bitlocker Drive Encrypition.

Step 3: Expand the related Bitlocker drive.

Step 4: Click Turn off Bitlocker.

Step 5: Click Turn off Bitlocker in the window.

After doing that, BitLocker should be permanently disabled on for the selected drive.

Solution 2: Disable Bitlocker with Command Prompt

If you're an advanced user, you can turn off BitLocker by using Command Prompt.

Step 1: Open Command Prompt as administrator. To do that quickly press Windows Key + X to open Win + X menu and choose Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu.

Step 2: When Command Prompt opens, enter manage-bde -off X: command and run it (Replace X with the drive letter of your Bitlocker drive).

Solution 3: Use another PC to disable BitLocker

If both methods have failed, then all you're left with is connecting your Bitlocker drive to a different computer and then try solution 1 and solution 2.

Solution 4: Use PowerShell

Step 1: Press Windows Key + S and enter powershell. Right click Windows PowerShell from the list of results and choose Run as administrator.

Step 2: When PowerShell opens, enter Disable-BitLocker -MountPoint "X:" command and press Enter to run it (Replace X with the drive letter of your Bitlocker drive).

Bitlocker drive decryption process will take a while, so please don't interrupt it. Once the drive is decrypted, BitLocker will be turned off for that drive.

Solution 5: Disable Bitlocker with Bitlocker password brute-force cracking tool

If we lost the password or Bitlocker recovery key, the Bitlocker drive cannot be unlocked/decrypted without the password or Bitlocker recovery key. In this situation, we need the 3rd Bitlocker password brute-force cracking tool, such as Passware Password Recovery Kit, Elcomsoft Forensic Disk Decryptor, Thegrideon Bitlocker Password which can help to unlock Bitlocker drive by running an attack.