Veracrypt Decryption Problem

[Sunny A]

Hi All, would really appreciate some help.

I decrypted my system drive through the “permanently decrypt system partition/drive” option under the System tab on the veracrypt GUI as a precursor to upgrade to Windows 10. This decrypted my system drive however when I restart my PC I still see the veracrypt bootloader at start up. At this point I simply press escape and Windows boots up as normal. My questions are:

1. How can I remove the veracrypt bootloader at start up?
2. I imagine it would be cleaner (and preferable) to remove the bootloader, however if I were to upgrade to Windows 10 and re-encrypt the system drive would this cause any conflict with the bootloader that is on there already?

Thanks
Sunny

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Hi,

Normally after decrypting your system, VeraCrypt will automatically remove the bootloader so your issue should not happen.

Did you decrypt using the rescue disk? In this case, you will have to manually restore the original bootloader using the specific menu entry for this.

Since you system is already decrypted, you can use "msconfig" to restore Windows bootloader and thus remove VeraCrypt one.

It is better to remove the VeraCrypt bootloader before any updgrade (using rescue disk or msconfig) in case there is any unknow conflict with with the upgrade process, although I personally think that the upgrade process will overwrite the bootloader with Windows 10 one, thus removing any risks.

[Sunny A]

Hi Mounir, I decrypted using the "permanently decrypt system partition/drive” option under the system tab in the GUI. When I opened up msconfig and looked under boot I only see Windows 7 entry in the boot menu, there is no mention of veracrypt. Any suggestions?

[Mounir IDRASSI]

Hi,

This is weired...and there was no error message at the end of the decryption process?
The removal of VeraCrypt is always performed and it is replaced by the original bootloader that it is present in "C:\ProgramData\VeraCrypt\Original System Loader". Do you see this file?

If you didn't have an error, the only explanation that i see is that when you launched the encryption process, the bootloader of VeraCrypt was already present on your disk...

Sorry for the msconfig idea, indeed it doesn't permit to rewrite the bootloader.
The only possibilities are either using the VeraCrypt Rescue Disk to restore the original boot loader (if it was the windows one) or boot on Windows Install disk to restore the bootloader (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/)

That being said, the Windows 10 upgrade process also rewrite the bootloader so you can also proceed without the above.

[Sunny A]

Hi Mounir, I used the rescue disk and that solved the problem. Many thanks for your help and the wonderful tool you created. Hope the feedback was useful.