Since Windows 8, Microsoft’s Secure Boot feature has been in use preventing unauthorized changes to the boot loader. So how does our software – which makes changes there – work with this?
More than 400 million devices are running Windows 10 in 192 countries across the world. As support dwindles for the previous operating systems those numbers are going to continue to grow as more and more users will adopt Microsoft’s “last OS”.
This means we need to keep up, and we’re working hard to do just that.
Microsoft brought over a feature from their tablets and iterations of Windows 8/8.1 called Secure Boot, which relies on UEFI specified boot functionality to prevent malicious software or unauthorized operating systems from loading during the system start-up process. This essentially clamps down on applications which try and edit the boot record or make unauthorized changes during boot-up.
Our instant recovery software requires a change to the boot record in order to run its restore before Windows loads, as well as gives users the ability to load into the subsystem.
RollBack Rx Home and Professional as well as our restore on reboot programs Reboot Restore Rx and Reboot Restore Rx Professional do have Authenticode for Windows 10 Secure Boot. Our software works on most of the Windows 10 systems with Secure Boot enabled. However, some users are still reporting problems – why?
Secure Boot is a feature – a software code – in the UEFI BIOS. Since it is a software it could have a bug. Some PC manufacturer’s own Secure Boot code has bugs in it, making it incompatible with Microsoft’s own Authenticode. This is what’s behind the problems we’ve seen so far.
Culprits so far include HP, Dell, and Lenovo.
While we’re going to continue to work to get our software running cleanly through any manufacturer, it’s also a matter of those manufacturers getting their own code up to date. If you are experiencing a problem with our software being flagged as not digitally signed this means you are using one of those bugged versions. In this case, please send in a support ticket at support.horizondatasys.com and let us know the manufacturer and the make/model of your PC. Afterwards, please uninstall our software, then disable SecureBoot, then reinstall our software.
We will continue to work on our end to make our software run clean and efficient on those machines, just as it does on hundreds of thousands of others.
Thanks!
~The Horizon DataSys Team