Why won't FileVault let me set a key?

Question

Why won't FileVault let me set a key?

This is (from my prospective) quite bizarre. I have a late 2010 Macbook Air which received liquid damage on Dec. 25, 2011 and was repaired (for $784) by Apple in Janurary. When I got it back they had replaced the hard drive and there was a fresh installation of OS X.

I went to turn on FileVault as usual, and it told me "A recovery key has been set by your school, group, or institution"....?!?!?. This was more than a little bit concerning because I don't have a school, group, or institution. At least not one that has anything to do with my Macbook Air!

I was not thrilled and tried calling Apple, but they said I would have to buy AppleCare to ask a question so I just gave up.

Now, fast forward 3 months. I have an actual serious need for the encryption because I an analyzing a confidential national longitudinal data set with personally identifible information on tens of thousands of people, including minors (for my dissertation). Encryption is actually required in the contract I signed. So at the suggestion of my college's IRC group, I tried reinstalling the OS again. It STILL gives that same message!

Does anyone have a clue what's going on?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Mar 16, 2012 10:20 PM

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Answer 1

eak9000a

Level 1

9 points

Mar 18, 2013 4:30 PM in response to jasonfromcorvallis

I have the same situation, except my 10.8 machine came back from Apple repair running 10.7, so I upgraded to 10.8 before turning on FileVault2, and it still happened. So this bug remains unfixed.

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Answer 2

eak9000a

Level 1

9 points

Apr 1, 2013 3:10 PM in response to eak9000a

I made a Genius bar appointment, and he was puzzled too, but escalated it via his channels and came back with this reply:

After a couple of exchanges with our engineering team they have recommended two things you may try.

The first solution is as follows:

Disable FileVault

In the system directory, go to "/Library/Keychains"

Move the files "FileVaultMaster.keychain" and "FileVaultMaster.cer" to the Trash.
Deleting the files should then allow you to enable FileVault on the system and provide a recovery key. Refer to article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5077 if you have questions regarding the location of the files.

Second solution:

Performing an erase and reinstall of the computer system will reset the master password and allow you to encrypt the drive again.

Obviously I picked the first solution. It is re-encrypting my disk at the moment, but I did get a recovery key before it started doing so.

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