Bitlocker can’t encrypt a fixed drive. “The system cannot find the file specified”

I’ve been stumped by this problem. Here’s the computer’s configuration:

• Intel i5 CPU
• ASRock H97 Motherboard (no TPM)
• 1 x Samsung SSD for boot (Bitlocker encrypted with USB key). Formatted with NTFS
• 2 x Seagate HDD mirrored using Storage Spaces. Formatted with ReFS
• Windows 10 Pro 20H2

Every time I try to encrypt drive D:, I get the error “BitLocker Drive Encryption Error”. “can’t encrypt the drive”. “The system cannot find the file specified”.

One thing I found strange is that I’ve had drive C: BitLocker encrypted for some time and also had a fixed drive encrypted the same way before. Since I added the two Seagate drives, I haven’t been able to encrypt any other fixed drives.

I’ve also tried to rename ReAgent.XML as recommended here and that didn’t help: Cannot re-enable Bitlocker

1 Answer

I found out what was going on when I went to view my System Restore settings. When I was exploring the ReFS volume settings, I inadvertently set Windows 10 in a Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) and several features were not working correctly.

To fix:

1. Make sure that you do not have this registry key entry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT. If the key is present, delete it.
2. Run DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth in an elevated command prompt
3. After the checks are done, run sfc /scannow to make sure all the system files are in good order.

After that, BitLocker will be operational once again for system drives and fixed drives.