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With security being an ever growing issue these days, we all need to make sure that our computers are protected from things such as viruses, malware, ransomware, phishing attacks and even other people. When Microsoft released Windows 11, they made it a requirement that your computer had things such as a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface).
Another requirement for Windows 11 is to have the secure boot option enabled in your UEFI settings. Secure boot is a security feature built into modern Windows systems that helps prevent unauthorized or malicious software from loading during the system’s boot process. It works by only allowing trusted software (like drivers, bootloaders, and the OS itself) that is signed with valid digital certificates to run during startup. It blocks bootkits, rootkits, and other low-level malware that try to load before the operating system, where antivirus software can’t detect them. It’s also something you can use when running older versions of Windows such as Windows 10.
If you are looking to upgrade your existing computer to Windows 11 and want to find out if secure boot is enabled on your computer, its very easy to do so and we will be showing you 3 methods you can use to find out. Even if you are already on Windows 11 and want to make sure secure boot is enabled, you can use one of these methods to check.
The first method we will be using to find out if secure boot is enabled is by using the Windows System Information tool. You can access this by typing system information in the taskbar search box. Then you can click on System Summary and scroll down to Secure Boot State and it will say either on or off.
Another method you can use to find your secure boot status is to go to the Windows Security Center and click on Device security on the left hand side. If you have a section for secure boot, then it’s enabled. If you do not see the secure boot section, that means it is not enabled.
Finally, you can open an administrative PowerShell window and type the following command to see if secure boot is enabled on your computer.
Confirm-SecureBootUEFI
Once you type in the command and press enter, you will be given a result that says True if it’s enabled and False if it is not enabled.
Since secure boot is implemented at the firmware level of your computer, it’s not something you can add if you do not have it. Your computer must also be using UEFI and not running an older legacy BIOS configuration. You also need to be running A 64-bit OS installed in UEFI mode such as Windows 11.
You can check to see if your computer is using UEFI from the System Information tool as well.
If your computer has the option to use secure boot but it is disabled, then you will need to go into the UEFI\motherboard settings and enable it. If Windows was installed in Legacy (BIOS) mode, you will also need to convert your disk from MBR to GPT before Secure Boot can be enabled.
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