[SOLVED] Disabling TPM on my Prime X570-Pro

[Grid21]

Hey everyone! I recently got the Asus Prime X570-Pro Motherboard. And according to Windows 10, my PC is qualified to update to Windows 11, which is a problem because I don't want Win 11, and also because I have a lot of software licenses for Music and video creation that I am NOT interested in having to reactivate. I'd like to disable TPM to keep Win 11 from being installed and tell Microsoft where to stuff it. But I drew concerned because a year ago, someone made a similar post about the TPM on this motherboard and some odd warning about "And when enable it says can't disable if enable..... cause loose all data... " See thread here: Asus X570 prime pro TPM So my question is, what "data" was the motherboard talking about, and can I safely disable TPM on my motherboard and not risk losing "data" i.e. my OS? Or was the "data" the security keys that supposedly the TPM holds? If someone could please clear this up for my understanding I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[KyaraM]

Well apparently from the Windows Settings update center, it sounds like you'll have no choice but to upgrade, so I'd like to stop it ahead of time so I need to know if disabling TPM causes "data loss" whatever that means exactly.

You have a choice. You always have a choice. Just click it away and be done if you don't want it. It will stay in the background until you decide you do. That's what we do on our home office laptops, been like that for months on mine and nothing happened so far. Also, there is always the possibility of a rollback to Windows 10 later on.

Why are you so aversed against 11, though? From what I can personally tell, it works great and even programs - including music/video/creativity software I paid for - works great and without any problems or reactivation after the upgrade. I can't remember ever having to do that.

Also, as other mentioned before, TPM doesn't store much and 99% of all software got nothing to do with it. If you don't need Bitlocker, for example, you don't need TPM. And if you want to encrypt your drives without Bitlocker, VeraCrypt is a good alternative.

 

[TerryLaze]

"not needed, ever" is a mighty bold statement.

As I said, if it's just about drivers.
Obviously if you don't know what you are doing reinstalling or repair installing will be much easier.

 

[CountMike]

As I said, if it's just about drivers.
Obviously if you don't know what you are doing reinstalling or repair installing will be much easier.

Much if not all drivers are still same or compatible between W10 and W11, some may work even from back to W7. Elementary drivers like for chipset and CPU are built in OS for HW waaaay back and newest ones.

 

[TerryLaze]

Much if not all drivers are still same or compatible between W10 and W11, some may work even from back to W7. Elementary drivers like for chipset and CPU are built in OS for HW waaaay back and newest ones.

We are talking about taking installed windows and moving it to a different system with different hardware, in that case the difference in hardware can cause serious problems, it's not that the drivers wont run it's that they will have nothing to talk to or even worse talk to the wrong hardware causing them to crash.
It's pretty rare with win10, it can handle changed hardware very well, but it's not impossible to happen.

 

[CountMike]

We are talking about taking installed windows and moving it to a different system with different hardware, in that case the difference in hardware can cause serious problems, it's not that the drivers wont run it's that they will have nothing to talk to or even worse talk to the wrong hardware causing them to crash.
It's pretty rare with win10, it can handle changed hardware very well, but it's not impossible to happen.

Well anything can happen but W10 and I believe W11 are very resilient to HW change. First, elementary drivers are already there and rest are easily changed as long as it at least boots to windows. I have done crazy things like for instance installing W10 on my Ryzen system and it booted on a Intel 775 platform.
There are measures you can take before a switch. Use DDU to uninstall drivers for GPU and Audio. There's specific setting for switching to new HW. Likewise, specific chipset drivers can also be uninstalled prior to switch, leaving you with just MS drivers that cover large range. If BOOT is successful and internet connection is available (mostly wired internet), windows will "pull" newer and better suited drives from it's amazingly large data base of drivers. They may not be as up to date as drivers from manufacturer but are all signed and/or WDDM.

 

[TerryLaze]

Well anything can happen but W10 and I believe W11 are very resilient to HW change. First, elementary drivers are already there and rest are easily changed as long as it at least boots to windows. I have done crazy things like for instance installing W10 on my Ryzen system and it booted on a Intel 775 platform.
There are measures you can take before a switch. Use DDU to uninstall drivers for GPU and Audio. There's specific setting for switching to new HW. Likewise, specific chipset drivers can also be uninstalled prior to switch, leaving you with just MS drivers that cover large range. If BOOT is successful and internet connection is available (mostly wired internet), windows will "pull" newer and better suited drives from it's amazingly large data base of drivers. They may not be as up to date as drivers from manufacturer but are all signed and/or WDDM.

Hey, I'm not arguing against you here, I'm on your side.
I'm saying the same thing as you, that if you have trouble you can remove drivers with sysprep and still don't have to reinstall fresh.

 

[CountMike]

Hey, I'm not arguing against you here, I'm on your side.
I'm saying the same thing as you, that if you have trouble you can remove drivers with sysprep and still don't have to reinstall fresh.

Not arguing either just wanted to share some experiences and solutions. Some times it could also happen that Windows get corrupted and will not work even when disk is reconnected to original PC. See that a lot.
Some stumbling points could also be related to IDE vs. AHCI where change could be difficult and even prevent BOOT.

 

[10x10]

OK, good for MR. I use that daily as well.
And you are far ahead of most people with that backup routine.

I'm just saying, that sometimes a full reinstall IS needed.
We'd all like that to not be the case, but....

I was wondering if you are a Microsoft Engineer. The answer for every computer problem is do a clean install. It takes me almost 2 weeks to reinstall windows. Re downloading programs, (apps are for phones not computers) and tracking down keys. Some keys are saved in email and can go back 15 years. Some are stored on data drives. A clean install wipes out all custom settings. Library folders are located on the boot drive by default. Now I'm changing locations, reinstalling bookmarks and trying to turn the latest Microsoft Virus into a usable O.S. So many settings to stop adds and other built in spyware. So I remember a fact about Microsoft Systems from way back in the Win 95 and Win 98 years. If it aint in the registry it aint on your computer. Which means every software problem should be fixable through the Registry. The only problem with that is finding and fixing the actual culprit. It could take a couple weeks or more. On a side note why are they making the OS for PC's like something that belongs on a giant ass phone that's not for phone calls.

 

[TerryLaze]

I was wondering if you are a Microsoft Engineer. The answer for every computer problem is do a clean install. It takes me almost 2 weeks to reinstall windows. Re downloading programs, (apps are for phones not computers) and tracking down keys. Some keys are saved in email and can go back 15 years. Some are stored on data drives. A clean install wipes out all custom settings. Library folders are located on the boot drive by default. Now I'm changing locations, reinstalling bookmarks and trying to turn the latest Microsoft Virus into a usable O.S. So many settings to stop adds and other built in spyware. So I remember a fact about Microsoft Systems from way back in the Win 95 and Win 98 years. If it aint in the registry it aint on your computer. Which means every software problem should be fixable through the Registry. The only problem with that is finding and fixing the actual culprit. It could take a couple weeks or more. On a side note why are they making the OS for PC's like something that belongs on a giant ass phone that's not for phone calls.

Even though things are far less difficult than you make them out to be.
(software is kept on a different partition, chrome saves all bookmarks and extensions)
This is why you take a clone or an image of your system as soon as you set it up the way you like it. Then you take incremental images after each major update or change in software.

 

[USAFRet]

I was wondering if you are a Microsoft Engineer. The answer for every computer problem is do a clean install. It takes me almost 2 weeks to reinstall windows. Re downloading programs, (apps are for phones not computers) and tracking down keys. Some keys are saved in email and can go back 15 years. Some are stored on data drives. A clean install wipes out all custom settings. Library folders are located on the boot drive by default. Now I'm changing locations, reinstalling bookmarks and trying to turn the latest Microsoft Virus into a usable O.S. So many settings to stop adds and other built in spyware. So I remember a fact about Microsoft Systems from way back in the Win 95 and Win 98 years. If it aint in the registry it aint on your computer. Which means every software problem should be fixable through the Registry. The only problem with that is finding and fixing the actual culprit. It could take a couple weeks or more. On a side note why are they making the OS for PC's like something that belongs on a giant ass phone that's not for phone calls.

No I am not.

But I can also recognize when a system is too far gone to "fix".
Lacking a good backup...that is often the only recourse.

On my house systems, I've done maybe 3 full installs since 2015. And those were just due to hardware changes.
I have had to recover a Macrium image a time or two.


And a problem is NOT always fixable via the Reg.

 

[CountMike]

I was wondering if you are a Microsoft Engineer. The answer for every computer problem is do a clean install. It takes me almost 2 weeks to reinstall windows. Re downloading programs, (apps are for phones not computers) and tracking down keys. Some keys are saved in email and can go back 15 years. Some are stored on data drives. A clean install wipes out all custom settings. Library folders are located on the boot drive by default. Now I'm changing locations, reinstalling bookmarks and trying to turn the latest Microsoft Virus into a usable O.S. So many settings to stop adds and other built in spyware. So I remember a fact about Microsoft Systems from way back in the Win 95 and Win 98 years. If it aint in the registry it aint on your computer. Which means every software problem should be fixable through the Registry. The only problem with that is finding and fixing the actual culprit. It could take a couple weeks or more. On a side note why are they making the OS for PC's like something that belongs on a giant ass phone that's not for phone calls.

You don't have to reinstall W10 or W11 from scratch. They have an option for "in place upgrade"
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/16397-repair-install-windows-10-place-upgrade.html
Basically just download newest version that's closest to your windows (Home, Pro language) start setup.exe from mounted ISO and choose to keep all data nad programs. At the finish you get all Windows system files new.