sylvester_balchunas SY

Is secure boot actually worth having switched on?

A game asked me to enable secure boot, which is how I found out it had been off on my PC for years. What does it really protect against for a normal home user? Any downside to just leaving it on?
secure boot
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akash_setup Oct 20, 2026
sylvester_balchunas
Leave it on. It stops anything that isn't signed from loading before Windows does, which is exactly where bootkits and some anti-cheat-dodging stuff like to sit. For a normal home user there's no real downside. The only people who bump into it are those dual booting some Linux distros or running very old hardware. One thing to check before you flip it though: Secure Boot only works if Windows is installed in UEFI mode. Open System Information and look at BIOS Mode. If it says Legacy, enabling Secure Boot can leave you with a PC that won't boot, and you'd need to convert the disk to GPT first (Windows has the mbr2gpt tool for that).
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