This means you asked BitLocker to do something while it was already busy encrypting, decrypting or changing the drive. Letting the current operation finish, or clearing it, resolves it. Jump to your situation below or work through the methods in order.
0x80310059 means BitLocker is already performing an operation on the drive, encrypting, decrypting, or changing protectors, and you tried to start another action before the first finished. BitLocker can only run one operation on a drive at a time. Often the first operation is still running quietly in the background, or it stalled and left the drive in a busy state. The fix is to check the current status and progress with manage-bde -status, let an in-progress operation complete, and if it is genuinely stuck, pause and resume it or turn it off to clear the queue, then start fresh. A reboot often releases a stuck operation as well. Once the drive is no longer mid-operation, your action proceeds.
BitLocker treats encrypting, decrypting and changing a drive's protectors as drive-wide operations, and it allows only one at a time so they cannot conflict. This error means one is already in progress and your new request cannot start until it ends.
Most of the time the running operation is simply not finished, encrypting a large drive takes a while, and it continues in the background. Occasionally an operation stalls and leaves the drive flagged as busy. Checking the status tells you which, and clearing a stuck operation frees the drive.
“0x80310059 is BitLocker saying one thing at a time, please. Usually it is still encrypting in the background and you just have to wait, so the first thing I run is manage-bde -status to see the percentage. If it is climbing, leave it. If it is stuck, I pause and resume it, or turn BitLocker off to clear the queue, and a reboot often shakes a stalled operation loose too. Once status shows the drive is idle, whatever you were trying to do goes through.”
manage-bde -status C:
manage-bde -pause C: manage-bde -resume C:
manage-bde -off C:
manage-bde -status again to confirm it is idle.0x80310059 just means BitLocker is busy, so check manage-bde -status first: if a conversion is climbing, wait for it. If it is stuck, pause and resume it, turn BitLocker off to clear the queue, or reboot to release the drive. Only act once status shows the drive is idle.
If status will not update and pause, resume and reboot do not free the drive, the BitLocker service may be stuck. Restart the BitLocker Drive Encryption Service (BDESVC) in services.msc, then check the status again. You can also submit your error to us for a tailored fix.