Saturday, July 27, 2013

How to disable Windows 8 'Secure Boot' etc and install Ubuntu, Mint or Peppermint

You've bought a laptop that came with Windows 8 pre-installed on it and now you're tearing your hair out? There's hope (though maybe not so much with the hair replacement). Although Windows 8 ships with a 'Secure Boot' setup that suggests you can't install anything else on the machine (not even go back to Windows 7 or good ol' XP heehe) it's actually quite easy to disable this and install whatever you like. All you need to do is turn the computer off and restart it with the F2 key held down. This will active the BIOS, where you can switch off the 'Secure Boot' and switch to Legacy OS, which means you can use your installers CDs just like you used to, or gparted or whatever. It took me just a few minutes...

I'm posting this from a Lenovo G580 running Linux Mint 14 (Maya). No problems.

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HAROLD BUDD: go in peace

Harold Budd Back in the 70s I had a friend called Howard, who lived in Wimbledon village, and we met regularly to listen to and discuss ou...