Always wrong password (preboot test)

[patryz-Z]

Hi, i have a problem with encrypting my windows. Everytime when i am in the preboot test phase, after typing the password - veracrypt says it's wrong ( i am 100% sure that is correct, i was testing passwords like "a", "abc" ).

The solutions i have tried:

1. Installed windows on two differents disks and tried to encrypt the system, but with no results (at this point i realised that this may be a bios problem )
2. Restarted the whole bios settings to default (twice), one time by removing CMOS from motherboard, second time by just clicking reset to default
3. Turned secure boot to disable and to enable
4. Same thing as 3. with TPM
5. Tried to convert disk from GPT to MBR
6. Tried to encrypt windows with an older version of veracrypt
7. Tried to set a PIM

Please help...

[Maingron]

I initially had that problem when I didn't realize the keyboard layout will change to qwerty for VeraCrypt during boot. I don't know your keyboard layout, but maybe that could be the reason, too?

[seriousm4x]

I had the same issue when windows decided it was a good idea to use the boot partition from a different drive

[patryz-Z]

Ok guys, I finally found a solution. The problem was my second drive, I don't know how, but this second drive had an overwritten header that interfered with the veracrypt encryption header. So, the solution is to unmount all other drives from your pc when you are trying to encrypt

[fzxx]

好伙计们，我终于找到一个解决方案。 问题是我第二次驱动的，我不知道怎么回事，但这第二次驱动了一个复盖头，干扰了veracrypt加密头。 因此，解决办法是卸下所有其他驱动器从你的电脑当你试图加密

VHD(X) deployed system, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/deploy-windows-on-a-vhd--native-boot?view=windows-11 The same problem occurs with Vera crypt version v1.26.10, which cannot be solved by unmounting other disks due to the way it is deployed causing the system to think that virtual disks are also disks. @idrassi

[Boarschti42]

Hi, had the sane problem. Solved it by displaying input of password in windows, making sure its the right one i wanted. Next reboot. In veracrypt bootscreen, my uefi sets german keyboard layout by default. No us layout! Means please disable this feature to must use english layout in setup! It depends on bios and notebook/pc vendor which layout is set.

Thanks!

[idrassi]

Thank you all for your feedback.

There are two issues at play here:

1. The VeraCrypt encryption wizard can select the wrong disk for writing the system encryption header when multiple disks are present.
2. During UEFI boot, some machines use the local keyboard layout instead of the standard US keyboard layout.

The first issue is surprising because the code is designed to pick the current Windows partition to identify the correct disk for writing the header. Furthermore, it seems to work in many cases (I tested it on a PC with multiple disks), so there must be specific conditions that trigger this issue. I will need to review the code again to see if I missed something.

As for the boot keyboard layout, this is quite frustrating because the default should be the US layout. I will check if there is a way for the VeraCrypt bootloader to enforce the use of the US keyboard layout.