Bitlocker Sucks and Microsoft Doesn't Care

"There should be more counseling during set up"

I'll agree with you there, and Microsoft is historically bad about explaining. Nevertheless, BitLocker has been around for years, and no one should setup a computer without preparation. It's a high technology device. It's also disconcerting that computer users are still not backing up, even though computer teachers, journalists and bloggers have been pleading with users for decades to do just that, which includes backing up their BitLocker recovery keys. (During setup, my Dell PC warned me in capital letters to make a backup copy of my computer's BitLocker recovery key.)

BitLocker was created to thwart thieves who steal computers. When you have physical possession of a computer, you can tamper with it in ways that no hacker can. BitLocker was designed to detect tampering and to lock down a computer when it did. The intent of BitLocker is that only the person who originally setup the computer has access to the computer's BitLocker recovery key, because the recovery key is stored in the Microsoft account that they used to setup the computer in the first place. That also means that if Windows is reinstalled, the BitLocker key for the new copy of Windows is stored in the Microsoft account used by whomever reinstalled Windows.

If someone no longer has access to the Microsoft account where their computer's BitLocker recovery key is stored, and no backup copy was made, they will never be able to unlock the computer, and there is nothing that Microsoft or anyone else can do about it. If there was some way around it, the thieves would eventually figure it out and BitLocker would be worthless.

Some people reinstall Windows again and again, or they send their computer out for repair and the repair shop reinstalls Windows, or they forget which Microsoft account they used to install Windows, or their Microsoft account gets hacked, and they can no longer access the correct BitLocker recovery key. That's why it's so important to have at least one backup copy of a computer's correct recovery key.

There are still people who don't make copies of their will, insurance policies, legal documents, etc. but most people understand by now how important this is, and considering how much information is available about BitLocker, it should be natural to make a backup copy of the correct recovery key (and passwords, software registration information and other critical pieces of data). But I'll agree with you that Microsoft could do more to make this clear.

If you have a desktop computer, and you trust the people in your household, you can disable BitLocker in Windows settings. Even then it's still a good idea to be able to find your computer's recovery key, because you might find a reason to enable BitLocker in the future.