Question TPM in Bios, is it enabled?

[brandy]

Hi, I have a 520 and one month or so I updated the bios. Yesterday I checked the BIOS and under Security there is an option Secure Chip and it was disabled. That means its disabled correctly? Now, I have to questions. Do this laptops comes with TPM disabled or enabled by default? I cannot seem to remember anymore and second. Under that option there is another one which says Enable Intel R TXT technology, or something like that. My question is, if I only hit Active under the secure chip but leave Intel R TXT off whats the difference between turning that option off? What I mean is, from what I understand is Intel R TXT is part of the TPM module, so why is it off? Do you need to turn both on? Or just the secure chip to have TPM enabled? Regards

[JDay]

Try disabling it in BIOS, reboot, enable and reset it in BIOS. That may fix this.

[brandy]

I tried that multiple times. But first, can someone answer me if I need to only set the Secure Chip opton to enabled in the BIOS or also the Intel R TXT feature? Because that one seems optional. Both options on? Or only Secure Chip on and Intel R TXT to off?

[brandy]

Which are the default TPM options in the BIOS for t520?

[ThorsHammer]

If you enter the BIOS with F1 after powering on the machine, you can press F9 to reset all settings to default.

[brandy]

Yes I know that. But that does not really answer my question about the Intel R TXT option. Should it be enabled or disabled for TPM, I cannot find anywhere documentation about this or what is the difference about running TPM with that option ON or OFF. If its required by TPM then why is there an option to turn it manually off while leaving the security chip (TPM) to on?

[JDay]

Enable TPM then initialize it in Windows. If it's still not working update your firmware to the latest version or reflash it if it already is the latest.

[tallbrian]

I had exactly this question. Lenovo W530 running Pre-release Windows 8.1.  I was having trouble with starting BitLocker, "user name or password is incorrect".  After reading as much as I could find on the net I decided that the TPM was not responding correctly.  From the TPM tool I "reset the TPM".  It said it would destroy all my bitlocker passwords but i was OK with that because I had just installed and I could install again if that is what it took.

When machine rebooted the bitlockered system drive was still working (I didn't expect that) but now the TPM tool showed that TMP was not in a usable state at all.

Reading this thread my attention was drawn to the Intel(R) TXT [disabled] setting in the BIOS.   There was no answer to the above question so I just enabled it and rebooted.   The TPM system was working again and I can turn on bitlocker for my main system partition.

So I guess the answer is "Yes the TXT security needs to be enabled".

I don't have all the answers, I still can't managed BitLocker for my VHD data virtual drives.   But I am working on that.