Enable Bitlocker for Windows 11 in Parallels

Introduction

I’m a Macbook user, and I’m very happy with it. During my daily work my Mac carries me all the way but sometimes it’s nice to have a Windows VM ready for testing purposes or in my case, using Visio in Coherence Mode, because Visio Online just doesn’t do it for me. ๐Ÿ™‚

My company requires a registered device and one of the compliancy requirements is having Bitlocker enabled. I’ve had multiple errors thrown in my face.

During the Bitlocker Encryption Setup the error said “This PC doesn’t support entering a Bitlocker recovery password during startup”

In the Windows Settings under Privacy and Security -> Device Encryption the following message kept bugging me, and no, rebooting didn’t work.
“Device encryption is temporarily suspended. Encryption will resume automatically the next time you start restart this device site”

Fix

I took the following steps to enable Bitlocker within Parallels.

  1. Press Windows+R and type in “gpedit.msc”
  2. Under “Computer Configuration” click on “Administrative Templates”
  3. Click on “Windows Components”
  4. Click on “Bitlocker Drive Encryption”
  5. Click on “Operating System Drives”
  6. Open “Require Additional authentication at startup”.
  7. Set it to “Enabled” and click on “OK”
  1. Press Windows+R again, type in CMD and hit CTRL+Shift+Enter to open CMD in Administrator Mode.
  2. In CMD type in “reagentc /enable” to enable Windows Recovery Environment
  3. Go back to the Bitlocker Encryption setup, it should work now.
  4. If you encounter TPM error C0090016 disconnect your Work account, reboot and reconnect it again.

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9 thoughts on “Enable Bitlocker for Windows 11 in Parallels

  1. YOU ARE A LIFESAVER! Looking up guides for two hours and none applied to this particular situation. Apparently PD-WIN users are such a small minority… Thanks so much!

  2. Press Windows+R and type in โ€œgpedit.mscโ€

    It tells me the gpedit.msc doesn’t exist is this still a viable solution?

  3. Found your post searching on the second error you listed. Thanks a million! Like you, my company requires bitlocker for all devices accessing the network. This worked like a charm.

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