Cannot Encrypt Disk with newer UEFI computers (Error code: 12000: bad parameters)

Products

• Drive Encryption

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to encrypt a disk with Symantec Drive Encryption 10.3.0 or previous (formerly known as PGP Whole Disk Encryption) the operation fails and you receive the error below.

 

Error code: 12000: bad parameters

Cause

• Symantec Drive Encryption 10.3.0 and previous did not support computers using UEFI firmware and would run into this issue, therefore, this issue could occur if computers are running UEFI firmware without emulated BIOS.
• Symantec Drive Encryption 10.3.1 includes UEFI support for Windows 8, but not Windows 7.
• Symantec Encryption Desktop 10.3.2 has support for UEFI for Windows 7 64-bit and Windows 8.0/8.1.

 

Resolution

Symantec Drive Encryption 10.3.2 and above now supports GUID Partition Table (GPT) formatting on Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit systems and Windows 8.0/8.1 64-bit systems, running in UEFI mode.

Systems using UEFI should upgrade to Symantec Drive Encryption 10.3.2 or above to obtain this full support for this new functionality.

Refer to article TECH203071 for more details on UEFI support and Symantec Drive Encryption.

 

Applies To

UEFI and BIOS are different types of firmware being used by computers.  There are three types of bootstrap configuration on laptops and workstation computers: 

UEFI > Operating System Boot loader

BIOS > Operating System Boot loader

UEFI > BIOS (emulated BIOS) > Operating System Boot loader

 

Symantec Encryption Desktop 10.3.0 and previous support BIOS and UEFI emulated BIOS boot configuration.

 

If an operating system is bootstrapped from UEFI directly, a newer version of Symantec Drive Encryption is required.