ESXi PSOD: "Unable to restore the system configuration. A security violation was detected" after reinstallation/upgrade

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• After performing a reinstallation or upgrade of ESXi, the host fails to boot into the hypervisor and triggers a Purple Screen of Death (PSOD) with the following error message:
  The system has found a problem on your machine and cannot continue.
Unable to restore the system configuration. A security violation was detected. https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/312109

or

The system has found a problem on your machine and cannot continue.
Unable to restore the system configuration. A security violation was detected. Reference URL: https://via.vmw.com/security-violation

• The error persists even after:
  • Reinstalling the ESXi.
  • Toggling Secure Boot (Enable/Disable) in the BIOS.
  • Toggling the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) status.
  • Attempting "Recover Options" from the boot menu.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 9.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

• This issue typically occurs when the TPM contains stale or mismatched encryption metadata/keys from a previous installation.
• Even if the ESXi software is reinstalled, the Secure Boot process detects a discrepancy between the new system configuration and the persisted keys stored in the hardware TPM cache. Because ESXi 8.x and above strictly enforces the integrity of the system configuration when a TPM is present, it halts the boot process to prevent a potential security breach.

Resolution

1. To resolve this issue, perform a hardware-level clear of the TPM reaching out to respective hardware vendor and reinstall ESXi.
2. If this still fails with the same error, capture the serial logs referring to the KB - Enabling serial-line logging for ESXi and reach out to Broadcom Support.
3. Simultaneously, contact hardware vendor to investigate the hardware possibly due to some of the issues below may have occurred.
    (Note: This is not an all inclusive list but list of a few possible causes.) 
   • The TPM chip is broken/data is corrupted, hence writing to memory fails. 
   • TPM chip seating problem
   • System broad issues

Additional Information

Note: The error "Unable to restore the system configuration. A security violation was detected. Reference URL: https://via.vmw.com/security-violation" is mainly observed on older builds of ESXi 8.x