Find Your Microsoft BitLocker Recovery Key

So your Windows Computer just recently completed some Windows Updates, or maybe you changed some system settings. But NOW all of a sudden, your Windows computer is asking for a "BitLocker Recovery key" to be able to start your computer!
But you have no idea what BitLocker is, what BitLocker does, nor do you know what to do!

"BitLocker Drive Encryption is a data protection feature that integrates with the Windows operating system and addresses the threats of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen, or inappropriately decommissioned computers."

Which is all fine and dandy if you purposefully set it up, and saved the recovery key information. The BitLocker disk encryption keeps your data safe in the event your computer is lost or stolen. But, more often than not, folks don't even realize that BitLocker is even turned on, and thusly do NOT have any recovery methods ready to go if they were to get locked out!

If your system is asking you for your BitLocker recovery key, the following information may help you locate your recovery key. 

There are several places where your recovery key may be, depending on the choice that was made when activating BitLocker.  If you purposefully turned on BitLocker hard drive encryption, you may have printed out the security key that was created.   Or you may have saved that BitLocker Recovery key information to a USB thumb drive and thusly created a "Recovery USB Key". If so, just use the appropriate recovery method that you have created/saved, to get back into your system!

If you don't have any kind of Recovery Key information backed up or saved, the easiest way to find your BitLocker recovery key is through the Microsoft account you were using on that computer! Your Microsoft account is typically tied to your everyday email address, plus a password that was set up.

So all you need to do is use another computer or a tablet, or even your cell phone, and sign in to your Microsoft account to find your recovery key. This is the most likely place to find your recovery key! 

You can do this by visiting, https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey

If you are NOT able to find any sort of recovery key, you would be looking at having to reinstall the Windows Operating System to get the system functional again. But, since the hard drive is encrypted, data backup nor data recovery would be possible.

If we can be of any assistance with this type of problem or issue, please don't hesitate to reach out!

Jon Pienkowski
Pacific Northwest Computers
360.624.7379
www.linktr.ee/pnwcomputers

M.2 SSD Not Detected by Windows 11/10 Installer

If you experience that the Windows installer cannot find your M.2/NVMe drives when installing Windows 11/10, try this process of loading the Intel IRST driver to gain access to your SSD drive!

For the Intel CPU platform, you need to manually install Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver during the Windows installation process. You can also refer to the Intel document of How to Configure RAID or Intel Optane Memory with Intel RST on an Intel VMD Capable Platform.
Note: The following pictures are a reference, it may be varied depending on the different versions.

Manually install Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver

• Download Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver Download Link.
• After downloading the driver, right-click [V18.0.4.1146_IRST_VMD_20H1] compressed file① and select [Extract All]②.

• Select a Destination③ (such as a USB thumb drive) and click [Extract]④.

• After the extraction is completed, please copy the entire folder (V18.0.4.1146_IRST_VMD_20H1) to a USB flash drive.
• If you used a USB flash drive to create the Windows 11/10 installation media as well, please copy the entire folder to the same USB flash drive which is created as the Windows 11/10 installation media.

• After the copying is completed, make sure the folder includes the following files.

Install Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver

• Connect the USB flash drive which includes the Windows 11/10 installation media and Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver (V18.0.4.1146_IRST_VMD_20H1 folder) to the target computer. (If you used a DVD to install Windows 11/10, please insert the DVD and consist of the above files USB flash drive to the target computer together.)
• Restart the Windows 11/10 installation process, here you can learn more about How to use installation media to insatll Windows 11/10.
• On the screen of Where do you want to install Windows and Windows cannot find any drives, please select [Load driver]①.

• Select [OK]②.

• Click [OK]③.

• Select [Browse]④, then find the [V18.0.4.1146_IRST_VMD_20H1] folder⑤ and select [OK]⑥.

• Select [Intel RST VMD Controller 9A08 (TGL) ]⑦, then select [Next]⑧ to install the driver.

• After the driver installation is completed, the drives will appear normally.

That's it!

The Windows installer should now see your M.2/NVMe drive!

Original Article:
https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1044458

PC, Mac and Linux Disk and Hard Drive Recovery

R-STUDIO

Mac, Linux & PC Disk Recovery,
and Hard Drive Recovery Tool!

Have you accidentally deleted some data?

Is your hard drive all of a sudden not letting you access the drive? 

Does your computer say that it needs to "format the drive" before it can be used?

Does it seem like your hard drive maybe has died?!

Well, R-Studio Recovery software from R-Rools might be your saving grace!

Empowered by the new unique data recovery technologies, R-STUDIO is the most comprehensive data recovery solution for recovery files from NTFS, NTFS5, ReFS, FAT12/16/32, exFAT, HFS/HFS+ and APFS (Macintosh), Little and Big Endian variants of UFS1/UFS2 (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris) and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 FS (Linux) partitions. It also uses raw file recovery (scan for known file types) for heavily damaged or unknown file systems. It functions on local and network disks, even if such partitions are formatted, damaged, or deleted. Flexible parameter settings give you absolute control over data recovery.

www.r-studio.com

Data Backup - Whats Out There Other Than Online?

Question...

Other than an online backup solution, what is a basic setup that you recommend for keeping your computer data backed up?

Answer: Pacific NorthWest Computers recommends getting a small portable hard drive for each individual computer you may have at your home/office. We have seen clients use one hard drive for multiple computers but that usually ends up being more of a hassle rather than a convenience. Plus if that one drive was to fail, everyone's data could be lost! So with an individual drive for each computer, backups can be scheduled and completely automated.  Additionally, in the case of hard drive failure, you only have to worry about the data for that one user versus potentially losing all of the data for multiple users!
If you want to make sure you data is REALLY secure, A Network Accessible Storage drive (also known as a NAS drive) is another option to take a look at. A NAS is like an external hard drive that is setup over your network. Besides creating easy access to data from any computer connected to that network, it also uses multiple hard drives to protect your data in the event that one of the drives was to fail. With a NAS, all your data and information is mirrored to additional drives so in the event a hard drive fails you don't lose any data OR have any down time! For businesses, no down time is VERY important!

So there are some other options as well, but this is a good starting point :)
If you have any general data backup questions or questions about your data backup system, give us a call or shoot us an email today!! 
360-624-7379
Jon@pnwcomputers.com
www.pnwcomputers.com

Fake Hard Drive Diagnostic Virus; Browser Pop-up/Redirection Fix

Pacific NorthWest Computers KNOWS rogue security and fake software applications very well. Fake software virus applications make up for 85% of the infections that we see on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month by month basis here in the shop. At first it was just fake security software programs. But the newest "trend" in the fake malicious software world is fake hard drive diagnostic software.

This fake diagnostic software virus pretends to have found issues with your hard drive, proceeds to hide your data (to seem more legitimate) and then tries to sell it self as a fix for all "problems" it has identified with your hard drive. When first released, it was not to difficult to remove. But the issue we are running into now however is that when a customer brings a system in that has this virus on it, we aren't just worrying about just getting the virus removed. But more importantly, reversing the changes the virus has made to an affected system. The big challenge has been with Browser hooks.

(Our Updated Browser Infection Blog Article Found Here)

Most of the time when we encounter this virus it will actually "hook" into (or simply put; infect) the executable "IExplorer.exe", which is Internet Explorer. Once "hooked" the virus can change, modify how Internet Explorer functions and can generate pop-ups and redirect searches and navigation in the browser. All after the virus cleaning is completed on the affected computer. Now, most of the time programs like Spybot Search & Destroy are very effective at reversing system modifications created by viruses. But so far, this browser hook issue is not "automatically" fixed by virus scanners and utilities and since hooks can sometimes be impossible to remove. This type of an issue can prevent us from declaring a system clean and can sometimes require us to reinstall the computer's operating system. Well, we think we figured out a fix!

After working on a computer from a local insurance agency, I did some extensive poking around an infected computer's file system and registry and was able to locate a registry location for something called “DOMStorage” under Internet Explorer’s HKEY_ CURRENT_USER registry key (HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\DOMStorage). In this registry entry, I found folders matching the names for some of the websites that were being generated in the random IE pop-ups's. I knew I was onto something but did not know what "DOMStorage" even was nor did I know why or how Internet Explorer even used it.

After doing some research on DOMStorage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_storage) it looks like DOMStorage, or Document Object Model Storage, is a web application software method and protocol used for storing data in a web browser. So I thought to myself, “Well if they can store data there, they could very well plant a program in those locations to hide and allow themselves to generate those pop-ups!”. So I went ahead and deleted all of the folders in the DOMStorage registry location (and there were A LOT of sites listed in there) and it’s safe to now say after removing those folders there have not been ANY Internet Explorer pop-ups since! After pop-ups coming up several times a minute, the system is running great and is running flawlessly for several days; with web surfing and all! No browser re-directions or anything!

(Our Updated Browser Infection Blog Article Found Here)

So I would say this is another problem solved and another win against viruses for Pacific NorthWest Computers!

Jon Pienkowski
Owner/Operator
Pacific NorthWest Computers

Rogue Hard Drive Error Repair Software

A new fake HD repair/error finding virus software is going around, and it hides all of your personal data so it  looks like all of your data has been lost or deleted; RUN FULL, MANUAL, VIRUS SCANS ASAP IF IT HAS BEEN A WHILE and MORE OFTEN THAN USUAL!

Rogue Security Program Infections; At a Glance!

More and more everyday I am see and hear about people becoming infected with Rogue security Software virus. 

Rogue security software is a form of computer malware that deceives or misleads users into paying for the fake or simulated removal of malware. Rogue security software, in recent years, has become a growing and serious security threat in desktop computing. – Wiki

Right now the most common form of infection they are using is web page hi-jacking and “trap” websites that are created to “host” the virus (why using Firefox is so important).

So what people end up encountering is a web page that has been hacked, hi-jacked, infected or exploited that is unknowingly “hosting” this virus and ends up spreading the infection to whom ever visits the website. In doing this, their trap has been set and the infections begin! This form of infection is commonly refered to as a “Drive-by Download“.

After the computer becomes infected, users start to see and encounter “security warning” icons in their task bar (lower right of the desktop), pop-ups warning of an infection and fake animated virus scans indicating your computer is infected as the virus itself tries to build its credibility. In  most cases the virus can even infect the Windows Security Center making it even harder for users to identify whether the software is real or not. However the goal being achieved out all of this is for the virus creators to make money. So they are hoping that the users of the computers that become infected, and fooled by the “song and dance” the virus puts on, and buy their infectious and fake security software.

So I wanted this to be a little heads up and explanation for everybody about this subject since it is the most common repair I encounter to date.

Be Aware, Stay Informed and Scan Often!
 
~Jon Pienkowski, Pacific NorthWest Computers