How to Remove BitLocker Drive Yellow Triangle Warning and Padlock

Actually the BitLocker Yellow Triangle Warning is a notice or warning that BitLocker was not activated. The BitLocker drive encryption of the drive is on, but it’s not in BitLocker Drive Protection yet. Here are the steps to remove the BitLocker warning and padlock icon on a drive in Windows:

What the Different Padlock besides Drive Means?

Different padlock symbols indicate different BitLocker statuses, and their meanings along with the status of the BitLocker drive are as follows:

1. Locked Padlock: BitLocker is in a locked state, and the BitLocker volume cannot be accessed.

2. Unlocked Padlock: BitLocker is in an active state, the drive is encrypted, and the BitLocker key is protected.

3. Unlocked Padlock with Yellow Warning Triangle: BitLocker is in a suspended state. The drive is encrypted, but the data inside is not secure because the BitLocker for drive has not been configured properly.

Compare and find from the figure, the main difference is of them is whether the BitLocker protector is empty. This warning prompt occurs when the system has started BitLocker encryption automatically but is awaiting user input to configure a password protector.

Solution 1: Ensure Drive is with BitLocker Properly Configured

If you want to enable BitLocker protection for your drive while also removing exclamation mark from a drive and keeping the padlock, try following these steps:

Step 1 Open File Explorer and navigate to the drive with triangle warning.

Step 2 Right-click on the drive, and select "Turn on BitLocker" and then follow the steps here.

Step 3 Type "Manage BitLocker" in the search box and press "Enter" to access to BitLocker Drive Encryption panel for more BitLocker Configuration settings.

Note: Sometimes, if we use CMD to Enable BitLocker but haven't set a password or any other BitLocker protection method, we may encounter this yellow exclamation mark error message. In this case, simply add a password protector to the BitLocker drive to resolve this error message.

Solution 2: Turn off BitLocker Directly

To get rid of both yellow triangle and padlock on a windows drive, the steps below is ready for you:

Step 1 Type "cmd" in the search box, and then choose to Run as administrator.

Step 2 Using following command to turn off BitLocker directly. Replace the drive letter "d" with your own.

Step 3 Wait for the decryption process to complete. This process may take some time depending on the size of the drive and the amount of data encrypted.

By following these steps, you should be able to successfully get rid of yellow triangle on windows drive.