Thanks to help from another forum, I resolved this problem. My boot files are now in SRP and I can now encrypt partition D with BitLocker. I’d like to give back to the community by writing a complete guide here because I haven’t seen a single guide that address this correctly.
For those with this same problem, the first thing you need to do is go to your Disk Management (type this in your Start address bar and click on “Create and format hard disk partitions” in the search results). In there, you must see System Reserved as one of your partitions. If it’s not there, then it is likely in one of your other partitions (except C). Now that you know the problem, you can apply this guide:
1. In Disk Management, right click on one of your partitions (except C), preferably the last one location on the HD that contains partition C, and select “Shrink Volume.”
2. For the “amount of space to shrink” enter 200MB (this is better than the native 100MB if you’re using BitLocker). Press Shrink
3. Right click on the newly created unallocated space and select “New simple volume”
4. Specify the volume size of 200, then select “Do not assign a drive letter”
5. Label the volume “System Reserved” and uncheck “Quick format.” Finish the process.
6. Right click on the newly created System Reserved and select “Mark Partition as Active”
7. Insert Windows 7 DVD or USB stick and make sure BIOS is set to boot from it
8. Once you boot from Windows 7 setup, select “Repair System” and then “Startup Repair”
9. Once that’s complete, remove the USB/DVD and restart
10. You’re done, but keep this in mind. Sometimes you need to run the repair three times before Windows can boot correctly, so don’t give up after it doesn’t work the first time. In fact, it probably won’t work after repairing just once.
If you were successful, BitLocker encryption will now be available for the drive you had issues with. This leaves the most annoying part – deleting the boot files from your file partition. If you want to do this, follow the steps below:
Enable the true Administrator account and log in. To enable:
1. Start-->Type cmd. In the results right click on CMD and Run as administrator
2. Type this command in CMD: net user administrator /active:yes
When you log off, Administrator account will be there. Log into it and follow through the rest of the steps below.
To delete the boot files, first make them visible:
Go to the partition where you think your boot files are, go to Organize-->Folder Options-->View. Here check “Show hidden files…” and uncheck “Hide protected operating system files.” Click OK. The boot files will now be visible.
To delete any of the boot files, you will need to right click on each file/folder and follow the steps below
1. Properties-->Security-->Advanced-->Owner-->Edit-->Select Administrator-->Ok
2. Properties-->Security-->Advanced-->Permissions-->Change Permissions-->Select Administrators, Check “Include inheritable…” and “Replace all child object…” (available only for folders)-->Ok
3. Properties-->Security-->Edit-->Highlight Administrators and give Full Control-->Ok
This is it. I’m not too happy about the time spent on this, but this was a good learning experience. This is why some people dislike Windows. I am waiting for that day when users won’t have to ever waste any time dealing with software issues. Maybe another decade or two.