Symptoms

UEFI0046 errors may occur during POST after enabling TXT with TPM 2.0 and VMWare ESXi 6.7 U3 on Dell EMC PowerEdge server with BIOS 1.3.7. This results in the server halting during with an F1/F2 prompt during POST with recovery steps bordered below in red:From the LifeCycle logs, the errors seen would be similar to: 2021-08-22 21:42:3584SEC0044SINIT Authenticated Code Module detected an Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) problem at boot.2021-08-22 21:42:3482UEFI0046An issue is observed in the previous invocation of TXT SINIT Authenticated Code Module (ACM) because the TXT information stored in the TPM chip may be corrupted. This issue does not occur with other operating systems/versions (including ESXi 7.0) or when using TPM 1.2 instead.

Cause

This is an issue with Intel Authenticated Code Modules (ACM) 1.0.D. Dell EMC Engineering and Intel have resolved this issue.

Resolution

BIOS 1.3.8 (or higher) resolved this issue. The latest BIOS is available at https://www.dell.com/support. For customers currently experiencing this UEFI error during boot while on BIOS 1.3.7, to recover, follow the guidance on the F1/F2 POST screen. Select F2 to enter BIOS settingsSelect clear under the TPM Hierarchy BIOS selection and reboot.Then update BIOS to 1.3.8 or higher prior to re-enabling TXT.

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