3 How to disable BitLocker in Windows 10

1. Disable BitLocker from Control Panel

You can disable BitLocker directly from the Control Panel itself. Here's how to do it.

Step 1. Open the Start menu .

Step 2. Type "Control Panel" and press Enter.

Step 3. After opening Control Panel, set View By to "Large icons".

Step 4. Next, find and click the "BitLocker Drive Encryption" option .

Step 5. Find the BitLocker enabled drive and click on it.

Step 6. Click on the option "Turn off BitLocker".

3 How to disable BitLocker in Windows 10 Picture 1

Step 7. When prompted for a password, type the password and press Enter.

As soon as you confirm the action, BitLocker will decrypt the drive and shut itself down.

2. Disable BitLocker by CMD

You can do a single command to quickly disable BitLocker in Windows 10. Before executing the command below, be sure to note down the letter of the encrypted drive. You can find the drive letter in File Explorer.

Step 1. Open the Start menu .

Step 2. Type "Command Prompt" , right click on it and select "Run as administrator" .

Step 3. After opening CMD as admin, execute the command below. Replace "X" with the actual letter of the encrypted drive.

manage-bde -off X:

Step 4. When prompted, enter your BitLocker password and press Enter.

After you authenticate with the password, Windows 10 will decrypt the drive and disable BitLocker.

3. Disable BitLocker using PowerShell 

PowerShell also has a dedicated command to completely disable BitLocker in Windows 10.

Step 1. Open the Start menu .

Step 2. Enter "PowerShell" , right click on it and select "Run as administrator" .

Step 3. After opening PowerShell as admin, execute below command in it. Replace "X" with the actual drive letter.

Disable-BitLocker -MountPoint "X:"

Step 4. When prompted for your password, type the password and press Enter.

As soon as you enter the password, Windows will decrypt the volume and disable BitLocker on that particular drive.

Lesley Montoya

Update 12 October 2020