Failure to mount SSD

[Martin Niemüller]

Hello,

I am unable to mount three encrypted legacy SSD.

Legacy means they were part of a now defunct PC so I want to mount them
as external drives instead.

Is there anything I have overlooked in the process or could still try? I
am grateful for any assistance.

Honestly, I don't understand the recommendations how to proceed with
legacy VC releases and resulting issues.

I first want to understand if you expect such a trouble resulting from a
legcy version.

Have a nice evening.

Hopefully,
Martin

Background
* SSD originally, in a desktop PC where the disks were encrypted as
    * 1 system disk and
    * 2 encrypted disks for data storage.
* This PC seems to be defunct and I am unable to repair it. I therefore
want to mount the three disks as external drives through my new PC.
However, I get the error message that the password is incorrect
(combined message of wrong PW or PIM or drive or an outdated
encryption). I get the same failure with a notebook.
* The operating systems
    * Of the legacy PC was Win10 64bit, upgraded from Win7 Home Premium
    * Both current systems run on Win11 64bit.
* I first tried to mount the SSD with the current version 1.26.2x,
then I downgraded to VeraCrypt 1.25.9 (64bit). Same error message, just
different error ID.
* I can't remember what was the VC version I used to encrypt the
drives originally.
    * For the data storage SSD, I assume a VC version later than 2013,
so VC 1.12+.
    * I've upgraded to Win10 end of 2019 and assume that I've encrypted
the system drive again, so this was probably done with a 1.24+ version.
    * I am already using the querty keyboard for the system disk.

[Gary Marks]

Hi Martin,

If it gives you any solace, you did exactly what I would have done in installing VeraCrypt v1.25.9 in order to use since-deprecated hash algorithms, and you're expecting the same results I would expect. It caught my attention when you mentioned you were using a qwerty keyboard in attempting to mount the system drive. You obviously know the importance of the a US layout keyboard, but there's a nuance that you might have overlooked. I asked Google AI "Are all qwerty keyboards considered US layout?" Here's the reply...

"No, not all QWERTY keyboards are considered US layouts. While the QWERTY layout is the foundation, it's a common misconception that it's universally used in the US. Other countries, especially those with different languages, have QWERTY-based variants with variations in key positions, character placement, and additional characters to accommodate their specific linguistic needs."

You seem to be at the point where grasping at straws is all that's left, although this seems unlikely to affect mounting anything but the system drive. And one more thing concerning those differences in the error codes you noted -- those really just correspond to line numbers in the source code where the error occurred, and that explains why they vary from one version to another.

Edit:
It just occurred to me that the keyboard possibility that I raised may be invalid. The US layout keyboard requirement may only apply at boot time when the pre-boot authentication code is running without benefit of an operating system, using BIOS calls to read the keystrokes instead. Mounting an external system drive using the "without pre-boot authentication" option while Windows is running may not have that same requirement.

[Enigma2Illusion]

Great post Gary!

@picscout

For the old encrypted OS disk, I do not see in your mount process that you used the optional feature "Mount partition using system encryption without pre-boot authentication" when trying to mount the old encrypted OS drive as an external drive or as an install secondary drive on the Win 11 PC.

Using VeraCrypt 1.25.9 version, when you are on the password screen, click the Mount Options button to enable the "Mount partition using system encryption without pre-boot authentication" option then click OK.