How do I setup Safeboot on my Gigabyte motherboard?

How do I setup Secure Boot on my Gigabyte motherboard?

I have a Gigabyte mother board, the GA-z87x-UD4h. Does anyone have any idea how to setup secure boot with Windows 7? I believe how it works is it has built in certificates for Windows 8, but there appears to be a way to create your own. Any insight?

 

Not sure what you mean by "setup" safe boot. Do you mean so you are prompted for a Normal or Safe Mode during each boot?

See http://www.blogsdna.com/18209/how-to-enable-add-safe-boot-option-for-windows-8-developer-preview.htm

 

Whoops, sorry. I meant Secure Boot. Title Changed.

 

You can't. Secure Boot is a UEFI function that is only supported in Window 8 or Windows Server 2012. It is not supported by W7.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824987.aspx

 

Well you can install Windows 7 as UEFI and my motherboard has the ability (I think. Nothing in the manual about the menus I see) to add certificates. If I can just add a Win7 certificate, shouldn't it work?

 

Sure, Windows 7 will install and run on a UEFI based motherboard - no problems there. But "Secure Boot" is just one enhanced feature of the new UEFI BIOS that works with a compatible OS. And for Windows, that's W8/8.1, not 7.

To the best of my knowledge, and Bing Google's, there is no W7 certificate for UEFI's Secure Boot feature.

Certainly, while Secure Boot is a very desirable security feature UEFI provides, it is not the only security enhancement UEFI provides. And you can still secure your W7 system without it. Of course if it is a feature you want, you can always upgrade to W8.1 - but that of course, assumes your motherboard supports Secure Boot. Not all UEFI motherboards do - especially those made before 2013.

 

I've thought about "upgrading" to 8.1 but ehhhh. We'll see. In the mean time, once my SSD get's here, I'll do a clean install of 7 with UEFI and see if I can get something to work.

 

No reason why it shouldn't. If you have never used a system that boots to an SSD, you will be amazed!

 

I haven't, and to be honest I'm skeptical of it. It's the weakest link in my PC so I decided to try one out. I'm looking forward to it!

 

Skeptical of what?

I typically have a lot of things loading when Windows starts so that naturally will extend boot times. My old XP system typically took over 4 minutes. I skipped Vista but when I built my W7 system with HDs, I was happy to see it boot in less than 2 minutes.

Now it is important to note that W8 uses different optimization routines to allow it to boot faster - even with HDs. But then W8 came along I built another system for me with SSDs only. I still load a lot at boot. This includes Windows Defender (the updated version of MSE in W8 ), WinPatrol, MBAM Pro, and MailWasher Pro, Start8, PowerChute (my UPS monitor) CoreTemp, and a few others.

From a totally off state, this W8 system boots in less than 20 seconds. And from a sleep state less than 10. And those times include me entering user account password!

 

Skeptical of the "snapiness" improvement. I know boot times will decrease but I keep my pc "clean" and turn off almost all auto start items so my PC already boots to the login screen in 30 seconds or less. That said, I use sleep mostly so I only restart my pc every couple of days.

 

Well there are lots of variables - in particular the performance of the hard drives you are used and the amount of RAM you have. But even the slowest SSD will provide significant performance gains over the fastest hard drives. Even hybrid hard drives.

That said, once the major components of Windows and your applications are loaded into RAM, drive performance becomes less an issue.