Unable to Enable TPM

[MattCz]

Hi! A few weeks back, when I turned my Surface Book 2 on, I was greeted with a Bitlocker screen, telling me to insert a recovery key. Doing so would allow me to access Windows, but it would still show up every time I restarted my laptop. I ended up suspending Bitlocker, and after that I no longer had to deal with the blue window poping up every restart. Fast forward to a few days ago and I tried to update to Windows 11. However, it tells me that the only thing preventing me from doing so is my laptop not recognizing a TPM 2.0. I know for sure it has one, but for some reason, it was disabled in the UEFI. But, every time I try to enable it, it tells me 'The system failed to change the state of the TPM. Please reboot the system to try again.' I have tried rebooting, ensuring Windows and everything else I could find was up to date, resetting Windows, turning secure boot on and off to see if that changed anything, turning the laptop off, waiting a bit, then turning it back on, and even running its batteries to dead, waiting, then plugging it in and trying again. Even with all this, I am still unable to turn the tpm on.

 

If it's any help, I'm using a Surface Book 2 and am on version 21H1 of Windows 10.

 

Thank you!

[NumLock21]

Reset bios back to defaults

[MattCz]

7 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Reset bios back to defaults

Any idea if that's possible on Surface laptops? I've done some looking around online but can't find any way to reset the UEFI. I also don't have access to the battery, so letting it die was about as close as I could get to taking it out and putting it back in.

[whispous]

2 minutes ago, MattCz said:

Any idea if that's possible on Surface laptops? I've done some looking around online but can't find any way to reset the UEFI. I also don't have access to the battery, so letting it die was about as close as I could get to taking it out and putting it back in.

There's often a thing you can select IN the BIOS to reset it to defaults.

[MattCz]

4 minutes ago, whispous said:

There's often a thing you can select IN the BIOS to reset it to defaults.

I just went digging through the UEFI and there's nothing there when it comes to resetting it. Because it's a Surface, the "BIOS" is called "Surface UEFI" and there are super limited options there with regards as to what I can do

[NumLock21]

7 minutes ago, MattCz said:

I just went digging through the UEFI and there's nothing there when it comes to resetting it. Because it's a Surface, the "BIOS" is called "Surface UEFI" and there are super limited options there with regards as to what I can do

Try this

Quote

Press and hold the volume-up button on your Surface and at the same time, press and release the power button. When you see the Surface logo, release the volume-up button. The UEFI menu will display within a few seconds.

 

[MattCz]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

Try this

 

That's just how to access the UEFI, which I have no problem doing. The problem is that it doesn't allow me to reset the BIOS/UEFI from within it. If you want to see what I see, about half way down this link shows me all the options I have (although for some reason the 'enable TPM' option isn't on this post, it it is available on mine and tells me 'The system failed to change the state of the TPM. Please reboot the system to try again' whenever I try to enable it): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/how-to-use-surface-uefi-df2c8942-dfa0-859d-4394-95f45eb1c3f9#WindowsVersion=Windows_10

[Donut417]

54 minutes ago, MattCz said:

Surface Book 2 a

What CPU does it have? Remember 8th gen Intel and above. I do know Microsoft will do select 7th gen, but I think thats for the Surface Studio Desktop. Not sure if that applies to any of the tablets or laptops. 

[MattCz]

Just now, Donut417 said:

What CPU does it have? Remember 8th gen Intel and above. I do know Microsoft will do select 7th gen, but I think thats for the Surface Studio Desktop. Not sure if that applies to any of the tablets or laptops. 

It has an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8650U CPU, so it should be no problem for updating to Windows 11. The PC Health Fact that Windows made me download to check if I was eligible for a Windows 11 update told me the only thing preventing me from doing so is the lack of a TPM, in this case the lack of it being enabled

[NumLock21]

TPM module might be faulty, hopefully it really isn't.

Don't have anything important, then try resetting it with a recovery disc and see if that will help turn your TPM back on.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface-recovery-image

 

[NumLock21]

8 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

What CPU does it have? Remember 8th gen Intel and above. I do know Microsoft will do select 7th gen, but I think thats for the Surface Studio Desktop. Not sure if that applies to any of the tablets or laptops. 

Just the Intel 7th gen Core X series can upgrade to Win11, rest of the Intel 7th gen cannot.

[TrigrH]

Try installing the latest drivers and firmware:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=56261

 

TPM is bios/firmware related so if its failing to enable it might need a bios update.

[DiscoJustice]

Just posting to add that I have also had this exact issue with my Surface Studio 2. I think it may have been triggered after a windows update that installed on the previous shutdown. I tried to reinstall the firmware, but no effect. I've seen a couple of other mentions of this happening to various surface devices after a windows update, and it sounds like it may have been roughly around the same time. It seems like the firmware update bricked a small number of these surface TPMs, and at the time everyone, me included, just disabled Bitlocker and carried on. Now we're all trying to install Windows 11, and these reports are slowly starting to pop up.