Shoot Your Own Foot?

Shoot Your Own Foot?

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Shoot Your Own Foot?

I very much wish that the TPM chip had never been invented! The only thing it accomplishes very, very well, is to lock you out of your own laptop forever and make your laptop irreparable by any computer repair shop!

This is just like using a shotgun to shoot your own foot! So how do you avoid this problem? Never enable BitLocker on your Windows machine! If it is already enabled, turn it off, which will decrypt the hard drive. This will take about 2-4 hours, depending on the size of your hard drive. Then clear the TPM chip completely. This can be done either through Windows or through your BIOS settings program.

Taking these two steps will insure that your system remains accessible. However, there is one more problem to watch out for! Windows 11 has a menu item called “Lock” that appears in the same list with “Shutdown”, “Restart”, and “Sleep”. NEVER use the “Lock” feature in Windows 11! Why? Because it automatically turns on BitLocker without telling you what your “unlock key” is…and your system may never be bootable again!

If you really must use Windows, then use Windows 10 Pro, not Windows 11! If you want to be smarter, then use Linux Mint Cinnamon and not Windows!