Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

Well Vista has done it. It has muffed up my TPM module and so I had to uninstall the Client Security Suite, and disable the TPM in BIOS just to get it to boot up. Is there any way of clearing the data in the TPM and start back at square one like it came out of the factory?

Thanks!

1. Turn off your thinkpad.

2. Hold ESC key then turn on the power.

3. Press F1 when your laptop is booting up.

4. Go to the BIOS, NOW you will see that you have an option to clear your TPM.

Let us know if it works !

That did not work. I tried holding ESC until it turned on and then pressed F1 to get into BIOS, looked around in there, and nothing showed up in any of the menus. I then tried holding ESC while the laptop turned on, and continued to hold it while pressing F1 and getting into BIOS. Again, looked in every menu for a setting to clear the TPM, and found nothing.

Any other thoughts...?

I think you have to boot into R&R and restore to factory condition... press the ThinkVantage buttun during first splash screen.

I can't do that actually, since Vista cleared my R&R partition (I posted about that a while ago and never heard a response). I did get the recovery CD's from Lenovo and have restored to factory state with XP twice now, and it does not clear the TPM.

so what exactly happens? does it not boot up?

In windows disk manager it shows the hidden partition as being there, but has 100% free space. When I push the blue ThinkVantage button during boot up, after having installed Vista (since i have the cd's now I can restore the hard drive to original factory state, including the hidden recovery partition, but once I install Vista it clears the entire partition) nothing happens. The only thing I can access during boot up is BIOS (F1), and the boot menu (F12).

When I installed Vista beta, it broke access to the "hidden partition", but did not erase it. I used the Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette to regain access to the "hidden partition". The problem is, that then broke Vista! If I had used Fixmbr or somesuch boot repair program, I probably could have fixed Vista, then all would have been right. In my case I decided to install Vista by a different method where it would not affect the "hidden partition" on my XP drive.

How did you install Vista in a different way? I have tried using G-parted to try and fix the MBR but that did nothing for me unfortunately. Every utility I try and look at that partition through it is 100% free space, and the MBR appears fine.

Any thoughts on the TPM??

The TPM? I don't use it.

I removed my XP hard drive with the service partition on it and put my spare hard drive for Vista in the Ultrabay Slim 2nd hard drive adapter and used an external DVD/CD drive to install Vista from. After Vista was installed, I put the original XP drive back in. On boot up, if I press F12, I get a boot drive option menu. Choose HDD(0) and XP boots. Choose HDD(1) and Vista boots. If I do not press F12, then by default XP boots (the main hard drive). I am confident that if I swapped the drives, Vista would boot by default. Whichever drive boots is the C: drive and the other becomes the D: drive. By doing this, Vista could not install a boot manager onto my XP drive as it is wont to do. This is what messes up booting into Rescue and Recovery.

On my T-60, just entering the BIOS and going into the Security menu presents options for clearing fingerprint data and encryption keys from the security chip's memory. You might have to re-enable the chip for those options to be present - I haven't looked at what's available with the chip disabled as of yet.

What is the TPM? Acronym = ?

Muse wrote:What is the TPM? Acronym = ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module