Surface 2 BitLocker Bug Gets Fixed Early, Available Now

As you're probably aware, or should be by now if you're a Surface owner, Microsoft's latest round of Surface revisions contain an annoying bug. Many who purchased Surface 2 (Surface RT) devices since the release have encountered a problem where the device will request a BitLocker Recovery Key on every bootup. If the key were a simple one the issue wouldn't be as bad, but the Recovery Key happens to be a long string of seemingly random numbers, comprised of 8 groups of 6 numbers. You really don't need to memorize the string. I wrote a tip in early December 2013 about how to locate the BitLocker Recovery Key stored online. You can read that here: Locating Your Microsoft Surface BitLocker Recovery Key. Microsoft has graciously embedded a feature in the Surface devices where the key is automatically stored in SkyDrive – almost as if they sensed this could happen someday.

This problem couldn't come at a worse time. Microsoft released the updated Surface devices in time for a holiday push, and any complaints during the holidays would be bad for Surface business. Add to that, that the company generally disappears during the month of December, and you have a concoction for failure.

Microsoft knows about the problem and has known about it for some time, however only on December 31, 2013 did they publicly acknowledge the problem in a KB Article (2921482). In the KB Article, the company also promises that a fix will be included in the stack of January 14, 2014 Windows Update releases. Well, more accurately, it's suggested that the January 14, 2014 is the "planned" release date.

I guess this gives them adequate time to finish up vacation, tread through email backlogs, and then check to see how widespread the issue has become.

UPDATE: The fix has been released early! Since this article published earlier today, Microsoft has updated the KB article, stating that the fix is now available from Windows Update.

Under promise, over deliver.