Question: Is it possible to have bitlocker enabled on a Windows 7 and XP dual boot machine?
Answer: Yes!
I thought I'd get that out the way as sometimes it is hard to find a straight answer. The important thing is that you need Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise.
My example:
I have a dual boot XP and Windows 7 Ultimate machine for work purposes (sometimes XP is very handy if you need to setup a PPP connection to an old storage appliance.) The Windows XP had been installed first, and Windows 7 Ultimate second.
I enabled bitlocker insider Windows 7 Ultimate, and let bitlocker encryption do it's stuff.
The laptop boots to the Windows Boot Manager as before and asks which operating system you want to use - XP or Windows 7. When you select Windows 7 it then boots into Windows 7 after first reading the encryption key. XP is completely unaffected, but when you're logged into XP you cannot see any data on the encrypted Windows 7 drive. Logged into Windows 7, you can see data on the XP partition.
XP doesn't understand bitlocker encryption, and cannot be encrypted using bitlocker. If all the important information you want to encrypt is on the Windows 7 volume, then this is not a problem.
Answer: Yes!
I thought I'd get that out the way as sometimes it is hard to find a straight answer. The important thing is that you need Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise.
My example:
I have a dual boot XP and Windows 7 Ultimate machine for work purposes (sometimes XP is very handy if you need to setup a PPP connection to an old storage appliance.) The Windows XP had been installed first, and Windows 7 Ultimate second.
I enabled bitlocker insider Windows 7 Ultimate, and let bitlocker encryption do it's stuff.
The laptop boots to the Windows Boot Manager as before and asks which operating system you want to use - XP or Windows 7. When you select Windows 7 it then boots into Windows 7 after first reading the encryption key. XP is completely unaffected, but when you're logged into XP you cannot see any data on the encrypted Windows 7 drive. Logged into Windows 7, you can see data on the XP partition.
XP doesn't understand bitlocker encryption, and cannot be encrypted using bitlocker. If all the important information you want to encrypt is on the Windows 7 volume, then this is not a problem.
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