Defective... TPM?

I purchased my Latitude D830 directly from Dell through a phone CSR. When I received my unit, the TPM was working fine and the login screen would accept either my password or my fingerprint, as it should.

Recently my laptop had been getting indeterminable slowdowns and extreme processor activity with no programs active (the two cores - using the MultiMeter sidebar gadget - would hover around 85-95% activity and peak to 100% every few seconds or so.) This would render it nearly useless for all kinds of activity - let alone work. In addition to this, the TPM was refusing to respond to any input - it actively rejected all passwords and fingerprints. I once had the maddening experience of attempting to log into my system over and over and over again for an hour before the OS finally accessed the TPM chip and let me in. So the problem was intermittent, though more often than not, it erred on the NOT WORKING side of things. I also noticed that the rejection of my login data was more often than not instantaneous. That is to say, the instant I swipe my finger or hit enter on my password, I immediately get the invalid username/password error. Other times, it would take anywhere from a few seconds to half a minute, displaying the teal busy icon and the "Welcome" text, only to reject my login data in the end. When I finally managed to log in, I disabled Embassy Wave Security and disabled the TPM in the BIOS as well.


A system diagnostic showed the former error to be indicative of a motherboard defect. On top of other problems (dead LCD pixels, noisy fan and noisy and intermittently defective optical drive), the Philippine ASP eventually replaced the motherboard, the ODD and the LCD. I took the system home and found that the TPM was still rejecting me. I took it back the following day and they replaced the palm rest, where the TPM is located. Even after a fresh reinstallation of the OS (Vista Ultimate), the TPM was still intermittently refusing a login. The strange thing here is, when the Preboot manager is activated, the BIOS accepts both the fingerprint and the password without any problems, and always on the first try. But when it boots up into Windows, it still refuses my login data.

I never had this problem in the first four months of ownership, and we've replaced all parts short of a full system replacement so it's definitely not a hardware issue. We've reinstalled the OS nearly half a dozen times over the last week, and we've updated all the drivers and TPM software from UPEK to the latest versions, so it's not a software issue either. The ASP techs have no idea what's going on and neither do I. I can't afford to go on without TPM due to the data on my system - and besides, not using it seems like a waste of the money I paid for it.

Does anyone here have any clue what I can do about this?

 

Dood, the only reason i see is the issue with the drivers. I had a similar problem. Mine was like, the TPM was totally disabled on system login or when the system comes out of hibernation.

I tried to rub my finger on the FPR (finger print reader) but it doesnt even show that it has read my finger kinda no response at all. I remember rubbing it soo many times that my finger print had almost dissapeared. J/k!!!

I updated the VISTA drivers and also downloaded the latest drivers both for the chipset and also TPM from manufacturer side. It seem to work without a provlem as of now!.

Try it and let me know..

 

Thanks for the response. Like I said, though, I tried all sets of experiments logging in with the software and drivers out of the box, and all the latest drivers and software (as of last week) and I got identical results both times. In this case, the biometric scanner WOULD accept a fingerprint scan, but promptly reject it.

Another thing, and this is REALLY weird. I created TWO administrator accounts on the OS, just in case the TPM on one refused to allow me in. That way I could enter through the other admin account and disable the TPM altogether. When I enabled TPM, the user account that had the Windows Secure Login enabled still refused my password, on top of which the option to slide my finger was not available. On the other admin, Secure login was NOT enabled, but the option for both the password AND the fingerprint was available. But having not activated it, I could just hit enter to log in as normal. How very strange.

 

I totally agree with you. It is really strange to say not the least. There should be a possible fix/work around to get this issue resolved.

Does your scanner say, the finger print quality is bad try again? or sumefin like that or does it say that the scanned image doesnt simpley match!..

 

When I enrolled my fingerprints in the Wave software, I had no problems with fingerprint quality - I went for broke and enrolled ALL my fingers, just to be safe (in case there was a problem with the database of one or four of my prints. In maybe two or three cases (out of the 30 necessary for a properly enrolled set of ten fingers) the quality was declared "bad," but since the recognition failure rate was so low, I dismissed it. And if I swiped my finger REALLY slowly I could eliminate the error completely. At least, in the enrollment wizard. Alas, no matter how slowly I swipe any of my ten fingers it still wouldn't work at the OS login screen.

 

Well, I spoke to a Dell Gold Support tech. When I gave him a full accounting of what had happened (down to the parts replacements) he said it was strange - there was no record whatsoever in my Service Tag history of any parts having been replaced. Moreover, he found it strange that the ASP did not replace the processor as well while the motherboard was being replaced. It turns out, they may have just been replacing my parts with whatever they had on hand, and did not log any repairs - or any activity at all! - to my system history.

So he created a case file for my situation and sent it off to Dell Malaysia, CC: Dell Philippines' ASP, Micro-D. So I have to call Malaysia up first thing in the morning, give them my case number, and they'll ship a whole new set of parts over to the local ASP, tagged and recorded. The ASP should then install all the appropriate parts into my system and log all the activity and work done on it, to be cross-checked by the global central database.

They're replacing the motherboard again, as well as the palm rest, the RAM and the processor. I joked: all I need now, I said, is a new keyboard, a hard drive and a chassis and I'll have a brand new computer!

Here's hoping this is finally resolved and that I can finally move on to other things.