Well, everything was working fine for months until...

1. First had power failure in vacation unit that took out cable modem and wireless router.
2. When power restored, my Outlook would no longer connect and, when connecting to my office desktop, there would be a long delay, then "searching for credential tiles", then - sometimes - a prompt for a password to use.

So, turning to Google, I discover that this is sometimes a problem for incomplete or unconfigured user authentication/password components. Off I go up to the Lenovo web site and download and install all the available, updated drivers for my machine. This took over an hour given the speed of the connection so I let it happen overnight.

This did not solve the problem. All the Lenovo solutions I have found suggest uninstalling the Veriface application, but this is not installed on my machine.

My machine also seem to be reporting a new machine ID to Apple, since they now insist it is not authorized to synch my iPhone.

I'm concerned that disabling or uninstalling the Trusted Platform Module will brick my machine. Is this a risk? My hard disk is not encrypted.

If I export all my passwords from Password Manager, disable and uninstall all the security enhancement software on the laptop, disable the Trusted Platform Module, wipe all the hash keys, turn off the TPM, then start the whole processup again, will my machine "wake up"?

If I then slowly install and configure all the authentication software, can I ultimately import all the passwords that I exported into Password Manager so that I don't have to try and remember all those passwords (I'm getting old).

Also, would flashing a BIOS upgrade change my machine signature so that iTunes thinks I'm a different laptop? If so, then perhaps that's a red herring here.