July’s Windows 11 update is sending PCs into BitLocker recovery

Oof, Windows is having a rough week. Only five days after a massive CrowdStrike update-slash-outage made headlines for crippling IT infrastructure all over the world (which, admittedly, is a CrowdStrike problem and not a Windows problem), a security update for Windows itself is sending PCs into recovery. The specter of the Blue Screen of Death is haunting IT admins this summer, apparently.

The specific details: the latest July Windows security update might just send you into a BitLocker recovery screen if you’re using the encryption feature. Microsoft itself alerted users to the possibility via a support page message, spotted by BleepingComputer. The update affects all current versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11, as well as Windows Server installations going all the way back to 2008.

If you’re using BitLocker and you know your recovery key, no problem—just enter it and you should boot up normally with no repeat issues. At least, that’s what Microsoft’s bug message says, though the current status is still “investigating” so things might change.

If you don’t have easy access to your BitLocker encryption key, you can find it via the online recovery screen portal for your Microsoft account.

This sort of thing isn’t all that uncommon with Windows, and there are certainly worse things that have happened via a security update. Plus, BitLocker is only used by a small number of the total Windows userbase.

But coming so quickly on the heels of the CrowdStrike disaster—which is right underneath the BitLocker issues on the relevant Microsoft support page—is unfortunate timing, to say the least.