How to add HDD (or SSD) to desktop computer (Fujitsu-Siemens ESPRIMO P7935) equipped with TPM

Question

I am currently trying to add a new 250 GB SSD (Samsung EVO 850) to a Fujitsu-Siemens desktop PC "ESPRIMO P7935" of a friend. The PC is equipped with mainboard "Fujitsu-Siemens D2812-A1", still running Windows XP of built-in 160 GB WDC1600AAJS-07WAA0 (S-ATA300, 3.5", 7200rpm, 8MiB Cache).

Otherwise the system features an Intel Core2Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16 GHz and 8 GiB of DDR2 RAM PC2-6400 (4 modules of 2GiB each - dual channel). Chipset is Intel Q45/Q43 Express Chipset (8SP 400 MHz, 64 MB DDR2 800 MHz 128-bit, internal GPU).

(BTW: originally the system was equipped with only 2 GiB of RAM. Upgrade to 8 GiB did not cause any problems and was immediately recognized in BIOS and Windows XP.)

All HW information taken from SiSoft Sandra.

The new SSD is meant to be installed with Windows-7 Ultimate.

Up to now, whenever I added the SSD - or even some plain old S-ATA HDD of 500 GB or else, the system would no longer continue to boot but hang during displaying POST screen, e.g.:

System hanging during startup. Picture taken before update of BIOS - meanwhile system features newest version. System needs to be power-cycled then - keystrokes are no longer recognized, not even ALT-CTRL-DEL.

Phoenix SecureCore(tm) DeskTop
Copyright 1985-2008 Pheonix Technologies Ltd.
Copyright 2005-2008 Fujitsu Siemens Computers
Version 6.00 R1.08.2812.A1


Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500  @  3.16 GHz
1 Processors Detected, Cores per Processor = 2

8061M System RAM Passed
6144 KB L2 Cache
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
ME Warning: FW Disabled; disabling HECI messaging.

System Management Configuration changed or problem occurred


Press <F2> to enter SETUP

I learned, that the system is equipped with a lot of "security" technology, that I was not familiar with, most importantly:

• TPM (Trusted Platform Module),
• iAMT (Intel Advance Management Technology)
• ASF (Alert Standard Format)

So I tried to figure out, what all of this means and hope to be vaguely familiar by now. I updated BIOS, tried to reset and/or disable each or several of the items mentioned above in order to get the system to correctly boot with the new SSD installed - up to now without success.

Besides I also tried an awful lot of different HW setups, e.g. disconnecting original HDD and trying to start only with new SSD connected etc. Depending on whether TPM and/or iAMT was activated in BIOS or not, different (or no) error messages appeared in the boot screen shown above - but I was never able to boot the system, when the new SSD was actively (i.e. power and data) connected.

In order to check, whether the original HDD might be encrypted, I simply connected it externally to another PC. As the filesystem and all folders and files were displayed corretly, I assume that the HDD is not encrypted (thru BitLocker or else).

Currently my assumption is, that the configuration of the system (e.g. thru UUID) is securly hashed inside the TPM and the system is configured to only boot with the initial configuration. This could be considered as some basic protection against "hacking" of the system?

Provided that my assumption is correct, I would be grateful to receive advice, as how to deactivate or update this protection in order to get the system booting with the new SSD installed.

Otherwise, i.e. if my assumption is incorrect, I would be very thankful to learn, what is going on here and how to be able to install another SSD/HDD in this system.

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

According to Fujitsu, no mention of security:

System Management Configuration changed or Problem occurredA system fan or system sensor has failed. Check the hardware operation.

See here, its likely the mobo/its chipset is too old. The fact that a 500GB drive stops it POSTing too supports the fact that it cant handle Advanced Format drives. I suspect this machine will only support older disks of a more limited capacity. In any case, with SATA2 it will only see partial benefit of an SSD.

Answer 2

Really sorry for leaving this unsolved for too long, sincere apologies, honestly.

Finally it turned out that the problems I encountered had nothing to do with TPM or BIOS security at all.

After fiddling around for some more time, I eventually realized that the problems were simply caused by a broken S-ATA cable 🤦 .

Anyway - I hope, that discussion might nevertheless prove useful in certain cases. Otherwise this case should serve as a nice reminder to always consider that any weird problem at hand might be caused by some completely different root cause than currently considered most likely.