Create a BCD entry for a Bitlocker drive

Question

Here is my system: I have a usb stick with only one NTFS partition. On it I have - a Windows to go VHD (windows 10 or 8.1 give the same results), - the bootmgr file - the boot folder with the BCD

I then activated bitlocker and all goes well.

1. Could someone explain which change bitlocker does to the BCD?
2. I would like to manually create a new entry in the BCD to boot the encrypted VHD. However, when I manually create a new entry, when booting it tells me the the "winload.exe" is not accessible. This is because the disk is encrypted and bitlocker does not kick in. How to create a BCD entry that calls upon bitlocker?

Thanks! Serge

Answer 1

1. Bitlocker does not change anything to the BCD.

2. Just booting a vhd is easy, you can use the "locate" function and point to the VHD file. However, I found that when a disk is encrypted with bitlocker this kind (using "locate") of BCD entry does not work anymore. To make it work: a. before turning on bitlocker, set the "device" and "osdevice" property of your bcd entry to "partition=C:". Windows knows that your C: is a vhd and will do all necessary linkage b. turn on bitlocker c. congrats, its working