T61 will not activate Security Chip to run Password Manager

Question

I have a T61 running XP SP3.  My PC is just out of warrenty so I can't contact them about support.  I recently had a problem with my battery and it basically took down my intire computer and it wouldn't boot.  So I have a slightly newer T61 in my office I put my hard drive into it and booted to use until I could get mine back to working.  All was well till I switched back to my original PC and it started saying that my Security Chip needed to be activated in order to you the security features on the PC.  When I clicked to activated it it said it needed to reboot....so after reboot, it came back up again.  I have tried this many many times and can't get it to activate.  I have tried making the chip all 3 possible states (Active, Inactive and Disabled) and nothing seems to work.  I also tried clearing the chip per some instructions I found on forums.  This didn't work.  The last thing I tried was to restore to factory install using the Lenovo factory restore.  This all went well, but as soon as everything got installed I started getting the Active Security Chip message after boot. 
I don't really care about anything the chip does except the Password management feature.  I have never used the other features mentoned about locking bios and the harddrive.  Today I tried telling the Message to not display the message again.  It doesn't come up now when I reboot, but neither does the PW manager.  Also I can't get the message or security center to come back up when I launch it from the Lenovo Panel.
I have seen several posts simillar to this, but they all recommended things I have tried, or didn't have responses.
I am game to try almost anything at this point????
Any help at all will be much appreaciated
Thanks in advanced

Answer 1

Hi Ray,
Welcome to the Lenovo forum
I would hazard a guess that Client Security Solution was installed while your security chip was active, and is expecting to use it. And since it appears that your system is having some problem with its security chip, Client Secuity Solution doesn't work right.
Client Security Solution (CSS) does not require the security chip in order to operate. It's been awhile since I used it, but if you start the CSS main interface, I think there is a configuration option to tell it to use the security chip or not. If you can find that configuration option, try telling CSS to NOT use the security chip, and then reboot, press F1, and disable the security chip in BIOS setup.
If the above doesn't fix your problem (or if I'm mis-remembering about being able to change the CSS security chip option after it's installed), you could try removing CSS and then re-installing CSS after you've disabled the security chip in BIOS setup.
There may be a better / easier solution... you might want to wait a bit to see if someone with more CSS experience has better ideas.
Good luck!
-Frank
Results of Your Ideal Business-Class Laptop survey, concluded 2009-07-29.
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