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badsequel

8 Posts

132704

February 10th, 2015 23:00

Latitude E5450 and McAfee drive encryption fails. Possible BIOS issue.

We have 3 E5450s and none of them survives being encrypted by McAfee EE 7. Long story short, after encryption the system refuses to boot.

The machines are 100% fine, passing any hw test you can throw at them, and McAfee themselves claim their software supports the platform.

McAfee thinks an issue in the BIOS code, similar to one detected on a Sony machine last year, is the reason the machines fails encryption and refers to this KB:

https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB81067

Now - where does one raise a support ticket with Dell regarding Bios code?

Anyway - if you have one of these machines, use Dell KACE for OS deployment - stay away from McAfee EE.

leigh.smith

4 Posts

February 23rd, 2015 03:00

Hi, I am also experiencing exactly the same issue with 10 E5450 Laptops that we have purchased. Did you have any luck with raising the issue with Dell?

leigh.smith

4 Posts

February 23rd, 2015 04:00

Thanks for the advice, I will give the UEFI option a try.

badsequel

8 Posts

February 23rd, 2015 04:00

I called Dell customer support - who in turn told me to send an email to no_business_support@dell.com (which is kinda funny - "no" is short for Norway). 

Btw: Try making an UEFI bootable usb stick and install windows from there. EE works afterwards - no problem. I suspect McAfee is right about the implementation of Legacy mode in Dell's bios has some weak spots.

badsequel

8 Posts

February 23rd, 2015 04:00

8 days since I registered a ticket with Dell and today some guy asked about BIOS version and McAfee version. Nothing else has happened so far

leigh.smith

4 Posts

February 23rd, 2015 04:00

OK, thanks for letting me know. How did you go about raising the support call? Maybe if I also raise a call myself, it may highlight it as more of a wider issue.

badsequel

8 Posts

February 25th, 2015 10:00

Hi again.


Got a reply from Dell support. A fix "might" come at some point. This is supposedly a known issue which affect other laptop models too.


Support rep gave this work around:

Uefi, legacy mode disabled, secure boot disabled, fastboot mode = thorough.

I have attempted manual install from usb stick twice today following this guide:

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html

It does not work. I get error 0x0000001 with a pointer to \efi\microsoft\boot\bcd\

Have not found a workaround as of yet. It's strange, because I followed the same guide and managed to install win7 and encrypt the disk on another UEFI e5450 laptop. Haven't figured out what the issue is now, but there must be some difference between the two laptops..

Let me know how it goes on your end, Leigh.

leigh.smith

4 Posts

February 26th, 2015 05:00

Hi,

Thanks again for letting me know how you are getting on with working around this issue. It sounds like a BIOS fix will be a long way off, so I think I will give up on that.

I took a look into the UEFI method, however unfortunately this is not an option for me, as we deploy out images using SCCM 2007, which does not support UEFI.

I am going to have a try logging the issue with McAfee, but I think I will have to look into sourcing another model that works with the disk encryption, which I'm not too sure how to identify.

I will let you know how I get on.

Cheers,

Leigh.

badsequel

8 Posts

March 3rd, 2015 11:00

I finally managed to install win7 uefi on these e5450s and encrypt them without breaking the OS.

Did the following 2-5 times pr laptop, but it worked in the end.. *sigh*

This is how I did it.

  1. Bios: UEFI boot mode. Legacy mode enabled. Fast boot = minimal, disable usb 3 controller, AHCI sata mode.
  2. On another computer: Make an usb stick(gpt partition scheme, fat32, default cluster size) using a win7 iso using rufus
  3. Wait for ages for usb stick to finish.
  4. boot, select UEFI usb stick. wait
  5. On windows welcome screen hit shift + F10 for command prompt:
    1. diskpart
    2. select disk 0
    3. clean
    4. convert gpt
    5. exit
  6. install windows(select custom install), let the installer handle partitions, choose partition 3 for the OS
  7. When the installer reboots the machine, unplug usb.
  8. When desktop is seen for the first time install the video driver first! Failure to do so bricks it every time for me on next boot. It gets stuck at the "starting windows" screen...
  9. reboot
  10. Bios: delete usb efi boot option. disable legacy mode
  11. reboot
  12. Install all drivers you care about. Attach the machine to the Domain.
  13. Hassle an admin to push EE for you.

Hope someone else have use for this.

James_UofA

3 Posts

June 24th, 2015 12:00

I have a ticket with their Advanced Technical Solutions team but I haven't heard anything from him other than an email and a voicemail to contact him....

I have the same issue where the E5450 works fine, until I turn on TPM then that's where it all goes to pot.  Now I have some laptops that won't even boot, o have ridiculous loading times, both to the welcome/login screen and into windows.  Also BitLocker does not enable when you check the BitLocker Check option.

MTXIT

1 Message

July 2nd, 2015 15:00

BIOS Update A07 was released today and we were also having the exact same issue with McAfee ePO and Drive Encryption.  Not just with UEFI but also "Legacy Boot" images from our MDT 2013 server.


We did NOT have to do anything special with the agent or end-point after upgrading the BIOS to A07.  It finally just activated encryption and went on through.

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