The disclosed approach works without the individualized credentials of failed machines when setting up recovery VMs in a cloud computing environment. Each recovery VMs is customized to properly correspond to the system state of its failed counterpart. An illustrative data storage management system recovers backup data and system states collected from the counterpart computing devices, custom-configures recovery VMs in the cloud computing environment, and injects the desired drivers into each recovery VM during an enhanced bare-metal restore process. The enhanced bare-metal restore process works without the failed computer's credentials. The system also restores the backed up data to recovery volumes attached to the recovery VMs. The present approach is both scalable and secure. When the enhanced bare-metal restore process completes, each cloud-based recovery VM presents a user interface that, for the first time after the computing device has failed, asks for the individualized credentials of the failed machine.