Hi! I’m trying to understand this before I install Bazzite. Is it possible to re-enable Bitlocker in Windows after installing Bazzite (on a separation partition, dual booted, on the same physical drive)?
I tried searching existing threads and only saw the mention that Bitlocker must be turned off before Bazzite installation, but it didn’t seem to touch on whether Bitlocker can be re-enabled after installation.
You can either disable Bitlocker or make sure you have a copy of your Bitlocker recovery key. Either way works. If you disable it, you can re-enable it after finishing setup of secure boot in Bazzite. On my system (GPD Win 4, but shouldn’t matter what system), I had my recovery key backed up elsewhere, so I just left Bitlocker enabled and typed the recovery key next time I booted Windows when it asked for it.
The reason for this is that adding the keys for secure booting Bazzite causes the prompt for the recovery key to appear next time Windows is booted when Bitlocker is enabled. Instructing to disable Bitlocker is likely just to be sure that people who don’t have their recovery key backed up don’t lose access to their Windows partition.
This and also because bitlocker prevents you from modifying/shrinking the windows partition and also causes issues with adding grub to the EFI partition.
Just disabling bitlocker saves you a lot of headache.
Ah, I see. Though I don’t think it prevents shrinking the partition from Windows, which is probably the better option than using the installer to do it anyway. What kind of issue does it cause with adding Grub to the EFI partition? In my case I preferred just making a separate EFI partition for Bazzite though. I do know of that you probably can’t boot a Bitlocker-encrypted Windows partition from Grub without having to enter the recovery key.
bitlockers full disk encryption would still have the empty space wrapped in encryption IIRC, not sure about booting it from grub