bitlocker stuck asking for chkdsk /r

Question

I recently cloned my HDD to an SSD. I previously had Bitlocker, but disabled (decrypted) before cloning.

Now that I've swapped in the SSD, I want to reenable Bitlocker. When it is almost done encrypting, it pauses with the error:

[Window Title]
BitLocker Drive Encryption

[Main Instruction]
An error occurred.

[Content]
This disk has one or more errors. Run "chkdsk /r". If these errors persist this may be indicative of a hardware fault. Contact the administrator of your system.

[Close]

[Footer]
Manage BitLocker

I have tried running chkdsk /r. It says I have to reboot, since this is the system disk. Rebooting doesn't seem to actually run a chkdsk, and the problem persists.

How can I fix this?

Solution 1

Just thought I'd contribute my solution to experiencing a similar problem. Slightly different scenario, I was integrating BitLocker encryption with the OS image via MDT (for Dell Latitude 6430u laptops), but found it would ALWAYS fail/crash when encryption progress hit 10.8% The resolution to my problem was to change the SATA operation mode of my SSD, from RAID (BIOS default for some reason) to AHCI. After this BitLocker completed without any issues.

Solution 2

Firstly you need to have access to a local admin account on the computer you're running the chkdsk command on - if you're not add yourself into the administrators group or ask for the local admin's login info. Now that's taken care off you can proceed....

You first need to access "Repair Your Computer" by pressing F8 before your PC starts up.

For that you need to press the F8 button during start up (same way you access safe mode).

Once you've selected "Repair My Computer" step through the following dialogs (including the one that asks you to specify your local admin login) until you reach the "System Recovery Options" dialog box.

You'll see a "Command Prompt" dialog down the bottom. Launch that and you should be able to run your chkdsk command without a problem. The chkdsk program needs exclusive use of the hard disk to run it's repair without the OS interfering. Once chkdsk has finished boot your laptop normally...

OS previous to Win7 were able to run the chkdsk command immediately after the laptop restarted - not so for Win7 and up. This tripped me up too because I was used to the Win XP way of running chkdsk. You have to go into "Repair My Computer" now it seems.

Looks like what happened here is that maybe your partition or MBR information doesn't exactly match the contents of the disk - both would have to be consistent before Bitlocker will allow you to enable it. The above steps should fix that for you however...