Can't reclaim space installing F42 on Dell 5645

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New Fedora user here, switching after many years on Ubuntu. I’m trying to install F42 Workstation on a Dell Inspiron 16 5645 laptop which came with Windows 11 pre-installed. I would like to keep the Windows installation but use most of the 1-TB SSD for Fedora.

I’ve booted from a live ISO on USB and started working my way through installation, selecting “Share disk with other operating system” on the 2nd screen. So far, so good.

Then I click to the 3rd screen, where I’m told I need to reclaim space:

Reclaim Space
Reclaim Space1332×1092 85.6 KB

I presume what I need to do is shrink the 4th entry from 999 GiB to say, 199 GiB and then use the leftover 800 GiB for Fedora. But the installer won’t let me resize the partition (maybe because its type is “bitlocker”?).

On the … menu in the upper right-hand corner, I see the option to launch the storage editor. Within the editor, I click “Unlock” as the first step in resizing the partition, but I’m asked for a passphrase. I have no idea what the passphrase is.

I’ve tried Gparted too, but it won’t let me resize the partition.

So:

  1. Where do I find the passphrase the storage editor demands?
  2. Is there another way to proceed?
  3. Am I even on the right track?
2

You need to go back into Windoze, turn off bitlocker and shrink the partition from in Windoze.
You can then use that space as a new partition in the Fedora installer.

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it’s an encrypted Partition. Boot windows and shrink the partition with windows disk management. You don’t have to disable bitlocker to do this.

The password is the bitlocker recovery key.

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4

MatH & Mark: Thank you!

With that hint, the installation was a breeze!

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