Question Changed tpm to enable tpm 2.0 and now windows crashes

[selenio34]

I wanted to update from win 10 to win 11, and I read that, to do it, I had to enable tpm 2.0. I have a meg z590 ace motherboard, so I open the bios and enable tpm 2.0. After enabling it, windows crashes after like 10 seconds I log in my user profile: I get blue screens error “WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR” or the “WATCHDOG_CLOCK_TIMEOUT” one.

I tried to reset the BIOS to factory settings, but it doesn’t work.

The only option that I seem to get is to “ripristinate windows” but by doing that I loose all applications installed, and I prefer to avoid it.

Is there a way to fix this? Windows should technically be still win 10 since I wasn’t able to update it because of the problem. Windows is installed on my internal SSD

 

[DavidM012]

Uh not sure depends if 'reset to factory settings'/clr cmos switches tpm 2.0 off again or if it's off by default. Don't really know what happened there or whether it's on or off by default.

So is it off now? Try switch it off first and reboot and well I'm not sure if a windows setup usb has the option to keep all programs and files in your user profile so that's another world of pain might be best to clone your disk to another one before reinstalling windows so you can rummage through and retrieve any data afterwards.

Some people already have a backup strategy in place. If you have a spare disk you could use disk genius to copy your data partition. That's a bootable usb drive app but you still need a working pc and yet another spare usb flash drive to create the bootable usb from. Well I have half a dozen usbs for different things. Should take my own advice and buy another hard drive or two still have 2 or 3 sata ports.

Generally it's a good idea to have several things pre-prepared which is bootable windows setup, bootable partition manager, and a backup strategy like saving your data to another drive so it isn't all stored in your user profile and deleted when windows 10 is setup again.

Though windows setup creates a windows.old directory if you don't wipe the partition and may leave some data intact depends where it's stored. Stuff in your user profile /my docs etc. not sure what happens to it if you try to reinstall windows. It's in the user profile folder and I think it may just float in 'users'.

I think you have to run setup from within windows to keep all your apps installed rather than off a bootable usb. Last time I fought with windows 10 I couldn't find the 'keep all your apps' option on the usb anyway.

So it looks like you could be stuck down a dead end there if you don't have a spare disk to copy the old windows to. Getting to a point where a windows reinstall doesn't upset anything is a bit of a skill that needs lots of preparation. For me it's just having the steam client setup and other setup programs I use on another disk along with docs and emls and just remembering passwords for logins. About 1.5tb of storage is all steam games so I don't have to redownload all the time.

So I don't do anything fancy or automated or networked like roaming user profiles where the user profile is stored remotely or anything.

Well it just looks like switching on tpm 2.0 corrupted your windows install and unless anyone has any better ideas I'd just blat the partition and reinstall windows with tpm 2.0 enabled. Windows 10 I've noticed can be sensitive to low level bios or hardware changes and barf sometimes. Occasionally got things like that when overclocking and turning it off.

If there is a way to possibly retrieve any data you want it's probably to clone the data partition to another drive with disk genius.. before you re-run windows setup.

Hum well just running windows setup without deleting the partition isn't really a 'clean install'.

 

[selenio34]

Uh not sure depends if 'reset to factory settings'/clr cmos switches tpm 2.0 off again or if it's off by default. Don't really know what happened there or whether it's on or off by default.

So is it off now? Try switch it off first and reboot and well I'm not sure if a windows setup usb has the option to keep all programs and files in your user profile so that's another world of pain might be best to clone your disk to another one before reinstalling windows so you can rummage through and retrieve any data afterwards.

Some people already have a backup strategy in place. If you have a spare disk you could use disk genius to copy your data partition. That's a bootable usb drive app but you still need a working pc and yet another spare usb flash drive to create the bootable usb from. Well I have half a dozen usbs for different things. Should take my own advice and buy another hard drive or two still have 2 or 3 sata ports.

Generally it's a good idea to have several things pre-prepared which is bootable windows setup, bootable partition manager, and a backup strategy like saving your data to another drive so it isn't all stored in your user profile and deleted when windows 10 is setup again.

Though windows setup creates a windows.old directory if you don't wipe the partition and may leave some data intact depends where it's stored. Stuff in your user profile /my docs etc. not sure what happens to it if you try to reinstall windows. It's in the user profile folder and I think it may just float in 'users'.

I think you have to run setup from within windows to keep all your apps installed rather than off a bootable usb. Last time I fought with windows 10 I couldn't find the 'keep all your apps' option on the usb anyway.

So it looks like you could be stuck down a dead end there if you don't have a spare disk to copy the old windows to. Getting to a point where a windows reinstall doesn't upset anything is a bit of a skill that needs lots of preparation. For me it's just having the steam client setup and other setup programs I use on another disk along with docs and emls and just remembering passwords for logins. About 1.5tb of storage is all steam games so I don't have to redownload all the time.

So I don't do anything fancy or automated or networked like roaming user profiles where the user profile is stored remotely or anything.

Well it just looks like switching on tpm 2.0 corrupted your windows install and unless anyone has any better ideas I'd just blat the partition and reinstall windows with tpm 2.0 enabled. Windows 10 I've noticed can be sensitive to low level bios or hardware changes and barf sometimes. Occasionally got things like that when overclocking and turning it off.

If there is a way to possibly retrieve any data you want it's probably to clone the data partition to another drive with disk genius.. before you re-run windows setup.

Hum well just running windows setup without deleting the partition isn't really a 'clean install'.

Thanks very much for the detailed answer. I actually have installed windows on an SSD (I edited my question, i made a mistake). Does this change anything in your response?

Anyway, I’ll definitely re-check if TPM 2.0 is actually off or not, even though I also manually disabled it by going to the BIOS (so not only by resetting to factory settings) so it should be off.

Also, you were talking about disk genius, but how can I clone my current SSD contents in a different one, if my PC doesn’t work? Would it be okay to do it on my laptop, by connecting the two SSDs (the one that needs to be cloned and the empty one) and download disk genius on that laptop to clone everything?

 

[DavidM012]

You can load utilities like disk genius on to a usb flash drive like windows setup. Could you clone it on your laptop... I guess if you have 2 sata ports in it. I mean you could use disk genius to clone a disk in some scenarios with it but don't in this one.

However if you can just load windows on your laptop you should be able to browse the drive with the data you want to save in windows explorer anyway and save any data you want that way?

Does it change anything well obviously there's a variety of approaches to the problem i just thought cloning the data to another disk would be the safest since you can place it to one side without getting anything mixed up or whatever, the point is to access the data you want to save before running windows setup and deleting the partition for a clean install with tpm 2.0 enabled ao windows setup detects the state of the system and installs appropriately. It probably has one or two automatic configuration options on setup so when you adjust it kinda doofs with the system. All this secure boot/ uefi/ tpm stuff is a headache.

So is learning to do new things while you're trying to save data from a doofed up windows installation.

Why you think your PC isn't working? Enabling tpm probably only corrupted windows you should be able to boot disk genius on your pc and clone the disk to save the data before you run windows setup and delete the partition for a clean install and hopefully you have your windows 10 key written down somewhere or have already registered a microsoft account things you should prefer to know and do before running into any problems that need a system restore.

You could just run windows setup without deleting the partition - do you understand that?- but it isn't really strictly a 'clean install'. So it might not fix it.

 

[selenio34]

You can load utilities like disk genius on to a usb flash drive like windows setup. Could you clone it on your laptop... I guess if you have 2 sata ports in it. I mean you could use disk genius to clone a disk in some scenarios with it but don't in this one.

However if you can just load windows on your laptop you should be able to browse the drive with the data you want to save in windows explorer anyway and save any data you want that way?

Does it change anything well obviously there's a variety of approaches to the problem i just thought cloning the data to another disk would be the safest since you can place it to one side without getting anything mixed up or whatever, the point is to access the data you want to save before running windows setup and deleting the partition for a clean install with tpm 2.0 enabled ao windows setup detects the state of the system and installs appropriately. It probably has one or two automatic configuration options on setup so when you adjust it kinda doofs with the system. All this secure boot/ uefi/ tpm stuff is a headache.

So is learning to do new things while you're trying to save data from a doofed up windows installation.

Why you think your PC isn't working? Enabling tpm probably only corrupted windows you should be able to boot disk genius on your pc and clone the disk to save the data before you run windows setup and delete the partition for a clean install and hopefully you have your windows 10 key written down somewhere or have already registered a microsoft account things you should prefer to know and do before running into any problems that need a system restore.

You could just run windows setup without deleting the partition - do you understand that?- but it isn't really strictly a 'clean install'. So it might not fix it.

My PC stopped working after I enabled tpm 2.0. The thing is that now it crashes before I can do anything, so I will not be able to clone the ssd with my “broken pc”: i can only do it from my laptop (or another PC), by connecting two SSDs (the ”broken windows” one and the new one) via an adapter, and cloning one into another with diskgenius. Is this right?

So if I understood right:

1. I clone the SSD as explained before.
2. I put the “broken windows” SSD back into my PC again
3. I take an USB and install windows 11 directly into the system: installing a new windows with already tpm 2.0 enabled maybe fixes everything. In case it doesn’t, I at least have cloned the SSD with the data. Right?

Anyway, thank you very much for your help

 

[DavidM012]

No I don't think you understood. Your pc isn't broken just the windows install corrupted when you enabled tpm. If you want to save the data from your windows drive you can clone the data partition to another disk and rummage through it later and retrieve anything you want.

Then just run windows setup (from a usb flash drive) and run a clean install with tpm 2.0 enabled. Should work.

Disk Genius and windows setup run off bootable usbs. Nothing is broken only your windows system files got corrupted but windows setup repair may not fix it so just run a clean install.

 

[selenio34]

No I don't think you understood. Your pc isn't broken just the windows install corrupted when you enabled tpm. If you want to save the data from your windows drive you can clone the data partition to another disk and rummage through it later and retrieve anything you want.

Then just run windows setup (from a usb flash drive) and run a clean install with tpm 2.0 enabled. Should work.

Disk Genius and windows setup run off bootable usbs. Nothing is broken only your windows system files got corrupted but windows setup repair may not fix it so just run a clean install.

Yes okay, maybe I expressed myself wrongly in the previous answer but I understood.
Thanks for your help