If you recently purchased a computer from a big box store, you may have a nasty surprise waiting for you if you have not backed up your computer. I have run into this problem over the last few months and then again yesterday. This is what happened.

One of my customers called to let me know their daughter’s Windows 10 computer will not start. His daughter was in college and had several important papers on the computer. After looking into the problem, I determined it was the power supply on her laptop. Of course, the laptop was out of warranty.
There was a problem with the motherboard, and the computer wouldn’t start, but the data files were still retrievable. I took the drive out of the laptop, and installed it in a drive dock. When the drive came online, I discovered it was encrypted. The files were not getable. The laptop had to be repaired before the files could be retrieved.
I let my customer’s daughter know that the files are not retrievable due to encryption placed on the laptop’s drive. She was a knowledgeable user, and stated encryption was not on. So, who did the encryption? The manufacturer.
We have been seeing a lot of this lately at Arnold Consulting. Computer makers are turning encryption on at the DOS level in the operating system. When a consumer goes to see if encryption is on or not, Windows settings indicate that the drive is not encrypted. But it really is encrypted at the DOS level. Why should you care? This makes retrieval of files all but impossible if you have a computer failure and no backup.
If you have an older style platter drive, files can still be extracted and saved from the computer even in the event of hard drive failure. However, if the drive is encrypted, there is no chance of getting these files without a backup, and most people do not regularly backup their computer.
Here is a way to check to see if your drive is encrypted.
Find out if you have encryption turned on
To check if you have any volumes, have BitLocker Device Encryption turned on, open an elevated Command Prompt, and type the following command manage-bde -status. You should get output that looks something like this Figure 1.

If the Protection Status indicates Locked, BitLocker is turned on at the DOS level and it probably would be a good idea to turn it off. If you want to turn BitLocker back on, it’s easier to do this in the Control Panel.
Additionally, make sure you are backing up your computer system. If you don’t and have a computer failure, you will never see these files again.
To turn off encryption at DOS level:
- Open an Elevated Command prompt
- At the command prompt, type manage-bde -off C:
- BitLocker will begin decrypting the selected volume
- So, this leads me to my next point—backup.
The statistic is:
Of all the computers running, only 20% are backed up at any given time, of the 20% that are backed up—50% fail recovery. So only 10% of all the computers out there have a tested, reliable backup solution.
Backing up—it’s more than just the data
When your computer fails, you just don’t want to recover files, you want to recover the whole computer. Windows 10 offers a limited backup utility, which is better than nothing. It will do what’s called a ‘bare metal’ recovery of the computer. All you need to do is to install a new hard drive into your computer and start the re-image process. This ensures everything comes back – and you have lost nothing.
Arnold Consulting has been in the data backup and recovery business for the last 15 years. We not only help you backup your computer with our software, but also provide flexible recovery options. Best yet, and do the restore for you. If necessary, we can have the failed system at your site up and working in less than 15 minutes. None of the main online services are going to do that for you.
Call us or fill out our contact form and let’s talk about what kind of backup and data recovery plan fits your small business needs. It’s far less expensive than having to recapture and manually restore all your data.