Secure Boot issues experienced by Windows 7 users

May 5, 2016 07:47 GMT  ·  By

One of the updates that Microsoft first released in March is causing headaches to Windows 7 customers whose computers use an ASUS motherboard due to what seems to be an incompatibility issue with Secure Boot settings.

In most of the cases, affected machines simply freeze all of a sudden, while others are getting an error pointing to a Secure Boot Violation.

“The system found unauthorized changes on your firmware, operating system or UEFI drivers. Press [OK] to run the next boot device, or enter directly to BIOS Setup if there are no other boot devices installed. Go to BIOS Setup > Advanced > Boot and change the current boot device into other secured boot device,” the displayed error message reads.

As Woody Leonhard of InfoWorld notes, it’s all because of KB3133977, an update that Microsoft first pushed to users as part of the March Patch Tuesday cycle. It was only optional at first, and despite complaints being posted online shortly after its release, Microsoft still made the update recommended in April, so everyone with a Windows 7 PC should be getting it through Windows Update.

ASUS already offers a workaround

Although the patch is still up for grabs and Microsoft hasn’t yet pulled it, reports of computers suffering from freezes after installing KB3133977 keep coming.

ASUS, on the other hand, has already posted instructions on how to disable UEFI Secure Boot on computers impacted by the problem.

“To protect user's systems from malware attacks, ASUS motherboards implement the Microsoft Secure Boot feature by default. This feature performs a legal loader check to boot into the OS. As Windows 7 does not support Secure Boot, with the update of KB3133977, the system might detect inconsistent OS loader keys, resulting in boot failure,” ASUS explains.

At the same time, it’s been reported that removing the update also solves the problem and gets computers up and running once again, but this involved additional work because users would have to boot into a different operating system and delete the patch from Windows 7 after bypassing its protection.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft to see if the company is aware of the problems experienced after KB3133977 installation and will update the article when an answer is offered.