Windows 10 Help reinstalling windows on machine locked with bit locker

[tv78]

I have an older windows computer that I forgot the password to. I want to reinstall windows on it, but I'm having a problem because I don't have another windows computer to create a standalone installation media. I tried running a windows virtual machine on Mac to create one, but it doesn't recognize the USB ports.

Is there any way to install windows on a new drive and then install it into the laptop, or install directly onto the laptop from an ISO file downloaded on a Mac? The only way I found so far is to create an installation media on a windows computer.

 

[tv78]

Well, usually on a forums site there are guidelines within the "contract" we as forum users agreed to when we signed up to be part of this site and get help. One of which is we can only help so far with encrypted and password hard drives because you can state that the hard drive is yours, but we as a community do not really know, truly, if the drive and information there of, is really yours.

I don't care about the encryption or files on that drive, I just want to install a fresh copy of windows 10. So for the sake of this example, can we say we have a new hard drive installed in the laptop and we're just trying to get windows 10 on it? It's essentially the same issue if I replaced the current hard drive with a new hard drive.

However, I never liked or used full hard drive encryption (especially bitlocker) because it not only slows down drive read and write access times, but the exact thing your asking help for can render a drive useless, and ultimately most of these bitlocked drives gets reformatted to re-use because people give up and take the easier way out. Yet a user on Tom's Hardware suggested that if you use UNetBootIn to create a USB live Linux utility boot drive and open up the boot partition, access and copy the files to another drive... supposedly Linux can ignore anything that has to do with Windows, like the bitlocked partition.

That's good, I have a copy of arch linux already installed on a bootable usb. You can do this from a Mac [EDIT: I forgot, I did this on windows, not Mac]. I tested it and it's up and running on the target machine. Is there a set of instructions on how to use archlinux to install windows 10 on the target drive?

Currently I have arch linux booted and running off one usb drive, and a second usb hard drive that has the windows 10 iso.

[EDIT: Am I understanding correctly that from within arch linux I can access the iso on another usb and use it to install windows 10 if the correct command line prompts are entered?]

To answer your other question, it seems to me that you only have your working Mac right now? If so, you can goto Rufus to get the USB tool and create a working bootable Linux USB drive. Although, I am not familiar with Macs and I think Rufus only works under the Windows platform, there is a way to create a virtual Windows environment under the OS X platform to run the Rufus program. Once that is done you can then create your bootable Linux USB drive. Good Luck!

Yep, only one working Mac.

 

[Neemobeer]

You can create the usb media from any system.
Manually create bootable Windows install USB

The same would work with the exception you wouldn't use diskpart. If you used gparted on Linux or a similar utility on Mac you just need to set the system/active flag on the partition and copy the files over.

Nothing special once you're booted to the installer. Just format the disk and install.

 

[tv78]

Thanks for the help everyone. I was able to borrow someone's computer and use Rufus, it's by far the easiest method. I did have to pull the drive and format it prior to installing windows however.