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Can I safely disable SecureBoot on a laptop? Will Win8 boot after disabling


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#1 soulburner

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 09:28

I have a friend's Samsung laptop with SecureBoot enabled. I need to boot from a CD to perform some backups and partition resizing, but I can't do that because SecureBoot is enabled. If I disable it, will it break the current Windows 8 installation from booting, or will it not change a thing?


#2 OP soulburner

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 10:05

Okay, so I disabled SecureBoot.
Windows 8 boots normally.
USB sticks and CD/DVD disks still don't boot. What the...?

edit - sorry for replying to myself like that, maybe a moderator could merge it with the original post?

#3 virtorio

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 10:13

Are you getting error message, or is the system just continuing on and booting Windows?
Are you trying to boot from the the USB stick/DVD drive using the systems boot menu, or by setting the other devices higher up in the boot order?

#4 OP soulburner

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 10:30

I tried moving the the devices boot priority in the BIOS settings screen.
I tried using the boot menu shown after holding F10 when booting up.

When the computer tries to boot from the DVD, for example, the LED flashes on the drive for a few seconds before Windows 8 starts to boot. So it seems the computer is trying to boot from the optical disk... but doesn't.

I'm kind of disoriented right now :D

#5 BattleDaggit

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 10:38

Perhaps the system is trying to boot the media in EFI mode, and the media doesn't have an EFI bootloader? Sometimes the boot menu you can invoke will give you two options for each device (e.g. Boot to CD, as well as Boot to CD EFI).

Hopefully systems aren't being made that will ONLY boot EFI configured media.

#6 The King of GnG

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 10:46

Are you sure your boot disks are "bootable" for real? Did you miss some BIOS/UEFI setting that should be enabled to let the computer boot from secondary devices like USB sticks and optical disks?

#7 OP soulburner

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 10:50

My disks are bootable on other devices. I just noticed that another computer with UEFI gives me the option to boot from "legacy" devices. This laptop (Samsung NP300) does not - it only lists bootable devices. So it seems it's trying to boot in EFI mode and EFI mode only. Is there a way to boot, for example, Hirens Boot CD on this computer or am I stuck with being able to boot nothing? :D

edit - I searched all over the EFI settings screen and found no further boot options. Only boot priority, SecureBoot, clock, Hyperthreading, battery charging mode (80% od full), passwords...

#8 BattleDaggit

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 11:04

Sounds like you're stuck, and I'm very concerned about how this is going to affect me in the future when I have to deal with this issue. I wonder if it might be possible to chain-load non-EFI media from a multi-purpose EFI boot CD or USB flash?

I have to say that your situation truly does suck.

#9 OP soulburner

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Posted 05 November 2012 - 11:57

Found it. Appears "SecureBoot" options are scattered around a bit. I thought I disabled it, but... I didn't :D
Everything boots nicely now, but many utilities on Hiren's Boot CD reboot the machine. The bootable CD of Acronis Disk Director works fine, though :)
Thanks for all the help and sorry to bother you, as it all came out to be a non-issue at the end :p

#10 np300

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Posted 31 January 2013 - 17:22

View Postsoulburner, on 05 November 2012 - 11:57, said:

Found it. Appears "SecureBoot" options are scattered around a bit. I thought I disabled it, but... I didn't :D Everything boots nicely now, but many utilities on Hiren's Boot CD reboot the machine. The bootable CD of Acronis Disk Director works fine, though :) Thanks for all the help and sorry to bother you, as it all came out to be a non-issue at the end :p

Hello Soulburner, how are you today? I got the NP300 and I've been trying to do what you just did for the last 2 weeks! First of all, well done. How did you get the UEFI media to show up? I appears I disabled the Secure boot and selected CSM OS. I also tried the other secure boot menu but doubt it worked. Please assist (with screen shots if possible).

Thanks.

#11 np300

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Posted 10 March 2013 - 19:51

Good day, sorry to bring this up again but I have tried for two months to sort this out. Does anyone know of any solution? I had to leave the shiny new windows 8 and continue working with my mini that is Windows 7. The boot options do not show "UEFI" beside it when trying to boot Windows 7 from USB.

Help, help, help. These charms are annoying! If I want to play games then it is all fine, but serious business can not take place always running round for basic tasks.