How to Easily Disable and Turn Off Windows Secure Boot?

I. What is Secure Boot?

Secure Boot, or Secure Boot in English, is an important security feature on newer PCs with UEFI firmware that protects the computer’s startup process, preventing unsigned UEFI drivers and bootloaders from being loaded during startup programs, and to block some unauthorized software, such as malware. But only Windows 8 and Windows 10 have a Secure Boot certificate, and if you need to install Windows 7 on a PC that supports Secure Boot, you need to disable Secure Boot. In addition, there are some situations that need to disable Secure Boot, such as you need to run two operating systems on your PC, use external devices such as USB or CD to start Windows system on PC, use Windows password recovery tool to start Windows, etc.,

It’s important to note that Windows 11 needs Secure Boot turned on to run, which is one of the many prerequisites for Windows 11 that Microsoft claims provides users with a secure experience. Therefore, please decide whether to turn off Secure Boot according to your actual situation.

II. How to turn off Secure Boot?

1. Enter UEFI BIOS first

The Secure Boot setting is located in the UEFI BIOS menu. If you want to disable Secure Boot, you need to enter the BIOS first. Two ways to enter UEFI BIOS will be introduced below.

Method 1: Enter the BIOS interface by pressing specific keys continuously and quickly during the PC boot process. (Due to different brands of computers or motherboards, it may be F2, F8, F10, F12, ESC or Del keys). As shown in the figure below, it is the DEL button. This method may fail due to some circumstances, for example, the speed of continuously clicking the BIOS shortcut keys is too slow, or the timing of clicking the shortcut keys is not well grasped. If you keep failing with this method, you can try method 2 below.

Method 2: Enter UEFI BIOS from Windows Setup

① Start the Windows computer, click the Start menu, select Settings to enter the Windows settings page, and click Update & Security.

② Select the Recovery option on the left, and click the Restart Now button under the Advanced Startup tab in the column that appears on the right.

③ Next, the computer will restart and enter the “Select an option” interface. Select Troubleshooting – Advanced Options – UEFI Firmware Settings. Then the computer will restart and enter the UEFI BIOS setup interface.

2. Disable Secure Boot

The following takes the MSI brand as an example to introduce the steps to disable secure boot in UEFI BIOS.

Step 1: After entering UEFI BIOS, if the BIOS is in Easy Mode, you can press F7 to enter Advanced Mode.

Step 2: Go to SETTINGS > Advanced > Windows OS Configuration, then set Secure Boot to Disabled.

Step 3: Save the settings and restart the computer.

III. (Extended Information) Regular backup of computer data to protect data security

Regardless of your purpose of disabling Secure Boot, it is recommended that you back up your computer data regularly to avoid loss of important data due to system failure or misuse. Renee Becca is recommended here, which supports automatic and regular backup of data and backup of various objects (such as systems, hard disks, partitions, files, etc.). The following is the specific introduction of the software.

1. What is Renee Becca

Renee Becca is a tool specially used for system/hard disk data backup and restoration. This software adopts leading incremental/differential backup technology, which can save you more time and disk space. It can not only help you easily backup and restore important data in your computer, such as programs, system configurations, emails, photos, videos, documents, bookmarks, etc.; it also provides system backup, partition backup, hard disk backup and disk cloning. It has many functions including system migration, and the operation is also very simple.

2. How to use Renee Becca to backup computer data regularly?

Step 1: Download, install and run Renee Becca on a Windows computer, select the Disk/partition backup option in the main interface Backup column. This option can back up the data of the entire hard disk or partition. If you only need to back up individual important data in daily life, you can also use the File backup function.

Step 2: Next, select the hard disk to be backed up in the source, and select the hard disk partition to store the backup data in the destination. If you need to back up the partition, you can select the Backup Partition option in the upper right corner.

Step 3: In the option Schedule, you can set the daily/weekly/monthly regular backup and the time to automatically start the backup.

In addition, in Backup Scheme – Scheme Type, you can also choose a suitable backup scheme mode according to your personal needs. Renee Becca has 5 backup schemes to choose from, version chain mode, single version mode, full mode, incremental mode and differential mode.

Step 4: Finally, click the Backup button to start executing the hard disk backup command according to your settings.