How To Disable Secure Boot In Windows

8.1 In Acer Laptops

Last updated December 17, 2014 By Abhishek Prakash 115 Comments

I have already written about disabling secure boot in Windows 8.1 when I was using a Dell
laptop. A number of people mentioned in comments that for them the option to disable secure
boot was greyed out in UEFI settings. They simply could not disable the secure boot for the
reason that the option was available to them.

I did not face this issue until I bought this new Acer R13 ultrabook. It comes with Windows
8.1 pre-installed and of course it has UEFI instead of the legacy BIOS system. In order to
dual boot Windows 8.1 with dual boot, I wanted to disable UEFI secure boot first. And when
I checked in to UEFI settings under Security tab, I found that the option to disable secure
boot was grey. Moving the arrow key up and down to select this option was futile.

In this article, we shall see how can we disable UEFI secure boot for Acer laptops (and
perhaps systems from other manufacturers).

Disable secure boot in Windows 8.1 in Acer

Steps to disable secure boot in Acer are similar to other systems, except for the end steps.
Let’s see how to disable the secure boot in Windows 8.1 system. If you know how to boot in
to UEFI, you can skip directly to Step 5. If not, follow each steps then.

Step 1:

Press Windows+I to open settings charm in right side of the screen and in the bottom click
on Change PC settings.
Step 2:

In here, click on Update and recovery from the left side pane.

Step 3:

In Update and recovery select Recovery option in the left pane and Restart now from under
the Advanced startup option. Nope, it won’t restart immediately.
Step 4:

After few seconds you’ll see a blue screen with some options. Choose Troubleshoot option
here.

In Troubleshoot, select Advanced options.

In here, select UEFI Firmware Settings.

Click on Restart button and this will restart your system and boot you directly in UEFI
settings.
Step 5:

The main task comes now. Things are slightly different for you here as by default Acer does
not allow you to disable secure boot. When you boot in to UEFI settings, you’ll see a screen
like this:

Using arrow keys, move to Security tab. Look for Set Supervisor Password here.
Set a Supervisor password. This is mandatory in order to disable secure boot or else secure
boot option will always be greyed out. Also, either save this password somewhere safe where
you can access it years later as well or simply clear it after disabling secure boot.

Once you have set the supervisor password, move to Boot tab now. This time you’ll see that
you can actually access the Secure Boot option and change its value. Press enter and change
its value to Disabled.
Press F10 to save and exit the UEFI settings.

I hope this tutorial helped you to disable secure boot option in UEFI in Acer notebooks. Feel
free to drop your questions and suggestions in the comment box below.