Secure Boot query
I’m in no rush to get Windows 11, but I do need some help. I have the necessary hardware spec, an Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus and AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, but Microsoft’s upgrade tool keeps telling me I don’t have Secure Boot set up. I’ve done some sleuthing and suspect two things are holding me back: first, I need to have my drives all use GPT instead of MBR, which requires the mbr2gpt tool from the command line. But since I followed a site to bypass login, I can’t boot to the command line at startup. Please help!
Kirke Holmes
TechLife responds: The fact you’ve bypassed the login screen won’t prevent you from converting to GPT, because mbr2gpt should ideally be run from the Windows rescue (PE) environment, which means creating Windows installation media using the Media Creation Tool from www. microsoft.com/software- download/windows10 (a USB flash drive is much quicker than DVD).
That said, you can convert MBR drives to GPT without having to go near the command line. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free ( www. partitionwizard.com) is capable of performing this task. Make sure you select the entire disk rather than just a partition on it, then choose ‘Disk > Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk’ and follow the prompts. Before doing so, take a full drive image of the disk using a tool such as Macrium Reflect ( www. macrium.com/reflectfree) in case something goes wrong.
You shouldn’t need to convert all your disks to GPT, just the disk(s) containing your Windows drive and any relevant boot partitions. Once done, navigate to the UEFI BIOS Utility, switch to the Boot section, and disable CSM. Next, set Secure Boot to ‘Windows UEFI Mode’, save your changes, and exit, and Windows should boot as normal. When you next run the upgrade checker, you should be clear to install Windows 11 when it’s out.
Finally, if you want to restore the login prompt, press Win-R, type ‘control userpasswords2’, and hit Enter. Make sure ‘Users must enter a username and password to use this computer’ is ticked and click Apply followed by OK. When you next reboot, the login prompt will be restored.