Secure Boot or not to secure boot, that is the question?

Has anyone or does anyone use the Windows 8 Secure Boot Feature and if you do, what are your experiences?

I know it can cause problems with old hardware and software but was wondering to what extent this could be a problem....

Thanks in advance,

from what I have read of it, dont use it.

it makes it harder to change OS.

if you worried about someone using unauthorised boot devices to access your local data then use something like truecrypt.

it's present on at least some laptops in retail land. I had to hack around in the BIOS to find a mode that would allow me to boot from a CD on one.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

it's present on at least some laptops in retail land. I had to hack around in the BIOS to find a mode that would allow me to boot from a CD on one.

Makes me glad i am not in the market for a laptop, the problem is if I am at some point, how do I know what laptop got secure boot on so I can avoid them?


My laptop is getting on, but still works ok, I don't use Windows on my laptop, I use Linux and I want to continue doing that even if i got a new laptop.

I've been meaning to post for a while but then I saw this thread and thought it was relevant here.

I've got Paragon HD Manager12 Suite but so far I've been unable to create any working boot media either CD/DVD or USB. My SONY Vaio laptop boots with UEFI enabled but I get a "No OS found" error if I try to boot from any media other than the HD. My backup isn't really useful to me until I can boot from CD.

As I understand it the idea is to prevent such as rootkits loading but at the moment it's a bit of a double edged sword to me. Probably my inexperience and lack of understanding is the real cause.

@ Yarwell - was it disabling UEFI that allowed you to boot from CD?

Edited by longedge (Sun 15-Sep-13 11:34:53)

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/17058-secure-bo...

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Makes me glad i am not in the market for a laptop, the problem is if I am at some point, how do I know what laptop got secure boot on so I can avoid them?

I think its a requirement for Windows 8 certification / logo branding, so you'll meet it almost for sure unless you go to a linux only or chromeos option. Or a Mac (LOL).

there were two steps for me, firstly enabling some legacy BIOS mode to give me an option to boot from the CD, then disabling secure boot because I had put in the HDD from a Windows 7 machine that had suffered a "liquid incident"

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-HP-ProBook-Eli...

I'd probably suggest not to enable it, cons outweigh the pros for home use.

Edited by Pipexer (Mon 16-Sep-13 21:11:54)

Cracked it finally, thanks.

My BIOS has the option to enable/disable secure boot and also separately to select UEFI or Legacy bios.

I started by disabling secure boot but still got the "OS not found" error. I then selected the legacy bios option and hey presto my Paragon boot CD worked.

Next job tomorrow is to create a new image of my HD.

I've reset my bios to their previous settings. I now know that if my HD fails I can boot from CD if necessary.