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FileVault failed and now I can't turn it off.

I just upgraded my MBP to Lion. I tried turning on FileVault, but after a couple of hours it reported that it had failed and I should repair my disk. I booted into the recovery partition, repaired with Disk Utility and logged back in. Now FileVault keeps reporting its failure and asking me to turn it off, but when I attempt to do that I get the message "Unable to modify a Full Disk Encryption context." Has anyone seen this before? Any thoughts on how I can turn FileVault off (and ideally back on successfully)?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 8:57 PM

77 replies

byoc

Level 1

0 points

Sep 6, 2014 2:07 PM in response to Gregory Barendt

Hi,

I was able to unlock and revert File Vault by following this blog: http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/decrypting-filevault-2-on-mac-os-x-1 0-8-4-unlock-first-then-decrypt/

Basically you load the disk utility right from bootup and unlock it using the screen shots shown in the blog post link. Make sure you select the appropriate drive from the list to see the "Unlock" and "Turn off encryption" options shown in the screen shots. Once I completed this, I rebooted the machine, and when I logged in normally (i.e. not in safe mode) it did not freeze with the spinning gear which was a relief. Furthermore, when I went to the File Vault settings it was already working away at decrypting the drive and 15 minutes later File Vault was successfully turned off.

This is a major issue that Apple needs to resolve, fortunately the above process resolved it for me.

Good luck, hope you have the same positive outcome.

mfanz

Level 1

0 points

Oct 17, 2015 11:12 PM in response to byoc

Unfortunately, it's not solved... I just installed El Capitan and it crashed. It looks like my disk was left in a inconsistent state. I had to repair the disk and the permissions. I unlocked it. I tried to decrypt it but using the revert command I get the following error:

"Error: -69750: Unable to modify a FileVault context"

I have no recent backup and still hope to find a solution without losing my recent data.

Any suggestion?

FileVault failed and now I can't turn it off.