T42, Vista, and Bitlocker

[jjd228]

2373-K1U with latest BIOS from Lenovo's website.

Even though I've installed the Vista TPM driver that's on the lenovo site, when I run Bitlocker from within Vista it says "No TPM found" (yes device manager correctly displays the TPM)

if anyone has a clue, id really appreciate it...

but you can enable bitlocker without a TPM with a policy change... so i did. with this setup Vista and bitlocker use a USB memory key instead of the TPM to store the encrypted keys... problem is the USB drive has to be available before Vista boots... which should be no problem for ANY newer bios... but guess what? this also doesnt work! USB key in, reboot... vista gets to the desktop and says bitlocker failed because it couldnt see the usb key.

usb key works fine once windows boots so the device is fine.

any ideas? or are thinkpads just the worst laptops ever?

[jdhurst]

<snip>
or are thinkpads just the worst laptops ever?

/me sighs heavily.

What makes you think a machine uncertified for Vista:
1. Is a bad machine?
2. Should run Vista uncertified?

The machine you have was certified for XP and will run XP flawlessly for years on end. It is hardly "the worst laptop ever". No one said it would run Vista. No promise was ever made. So you take your chances when you do it.
... JD Hurst

[jjd228]

ok...

A) lenovo released a "vista certified" driver for the tpm so one would think it would work.

B) as far as being "certified for xp", that only means someone loaded xp on it and played for a few minutes to determine that it works... vista runs fine on the thinkpad hardware. (dont put so much stock in stickers)

C) my MAIN problem is that the USB drive isnt being picked up PRE-BOOT... which is a BIOS function and has nothing to do with the version of windows.

so... any ideas?

[GomJabbar]

Could it be that your installation of the TPM software was not done properly at the beginning, so that it is not working now? Sometimes if a device driver is not installed with the proper method the first time, subsequent installs will fail. Even if it turns out to be true that the TPM driver is not supported by Bitlocker, that does not mean that it is not supported by IBM/Lenovo software.

5. BitLocker Requirements for System Firmware Support of USB Flash Drive
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This section lists the BitLocker requirements for system firmware support for reading and writing files from a USB mass storage class device.

BIOS 1j
The BIOS must successfully perform a read operation on a reference USB mass storage class device.

Windows Vista BitLocker Client Platform Requirements

Perhaps in the future, additional Vista support will be provided by Lenovo, but as JD Hurst said (more or less), the T42 was never designed with Vista in mind. Lenovo quit selling them over a year before Vista came out. To the extent that Lenovo supports Vista with an out-of-date computer, we should be grateful. At least Vista will run on a T42.

If you believe thinkpads are the worst laptops ever, get a Dell.

[jjd228]

here are the possible problems:

is the tpm in the T42 version 1.2? i cant seem to find this out but bitlocker wont work with older TPM's

and is the latest available bios update v1.2 TCG-compliant (Trusted Computing Group)? this, i also cant get an answer to