HDD GURU FORUMS

Customer brought a dead Thinkpad E14 where the HDD is encrypted with BitLocker using a keyphrase from BIOS (or similiar). The drive is working, but because of BL we cannot recover the data from the drive. Only way seems to be to repair the laptop so it can boot and then dump the drive.

After poking around it seems that atleast one voltage regulator is dead on the motherboard. I have reverse engineered the powerbutton and it goes to a 3.3V place. 3.3V is shown up on the node when I attach the power supply and when we press the power button the amperes are increasing so there's definately some activity there. However, 5V is gone, and probably one more voltage I do not know about and I fail to find the regulators for these voltages.

I have read that some people purchase laptop schematics when doing this kind of repairs / recovery and I think that's what we need to do here to help the customer. But, where do we buy these schematics?

Why not just sub the laptop repair work out to a specialist and save yourself the hassle.

Badcaps is a useful place for boardviews and schematics for stuff like this otherwise the board number and boardview or schematics in google is a good place to start.

You can find the schematic here, and it's free:

https://www.alisaler.com/lenovo-thinkpa ... schematic/

There is few option for such issue, for example repair or swap. If need schematic, let me know. I have it.

Maybe the easiest way here is to purchase another laptop of exact same make/brand and swap some components. Where do BitLocker usually get its keys from? BIOS and TPM-chips?