Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Security Device cannot be found

[geloneck]

I am one of the administrators of a network of approximately 200 users.

One of our users has a laptop which has perplexing problems and error messages.

One of the error messages that has puzzled me is Event ID 537, Level: Critical. The description: "A compatible Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Security Device cannot be found on this computer. TBS could not be started".

It is a Dell Latitude D830 with Windows Vista installed on it (32-bit, not 64-bit).

I contacted Dell and gave them the error message. The technician asked me if the user has a fingerprint device that he uses to log in. He has no fingerprint device nor any other security device at all!

The end-user is having several problems on his laptop. After it works for several hours, all of the items at the bottom of the screen become blurry and pile up one on top of the other for no reason. The laptop then gets sluggish. If you click on any of the minimized items nothing readable appears.

The only solution has been to reboot the PC when this happens.

Every time he reports this (it happens several times a day, usually a few hours apart), he gets the Event ID 537 and Event ID 7001, which says that an NTRU service depends on the TPM Base Services, which failed to start because of the following error (and this is a quote): "The operation completed successfully".

Those two events happen at the time he gets the problem and they are often the only 2 events in the System "Event Viewer" that are errors or warnings for the whole day!

I sat at his laptop and watched it happen myself. Without doing anything, the icons pile on top of each other on the lower left of the screen, the PC becomes virtually useless, and anything you do get when you click on an icon is not readable.

I've never seen this before. It's weird. Does anyone have any suggestions?