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Windows 8 Update Erases Grub, Enables Secure Boot

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-a-trap! dept.

deif writes:

A recent Windows 8 update detects other OS installs as a "security problem", erases non-windows bootloaders and enables UEFI Secure Boot, all without user intervention.

From a posting on reddit:

I contacted MS by chat (in Dutch, so of no use to you) and asked them about this. They vehemently denied this was possible at all. Multiple times, in no uncertain terms. Same results were acquired by phone: denial, denial, denial.

I pointed out that it did actually happen, and that it wan't the first time such a thing had happened in the history of MS updates -so "impossible" was BS, to put it shortly.

Then came a chat reply which amounted to "MS updates makes sure W8 functions fine, it does not look at other OS's integrity". This is, in my opinion, a de-facto admission that yes, the update had changed the bootloader back to the W8 version that ignores other OS's, and yes, it had set the UEFI setting back to "secure boot."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Drew617 on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:39AM

    by Drew617 (1876) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:39AM (#21523)

    I'm no fan of MS/Win, but my gut reaction is that this is more likely user error or misunderstanding.

    I skimmed the original post on Reddit and don't see much in the way of real information.

    Dude's got a working Win8 partition, right? How about a list of patches installed before GRUB was erased? Should be simple enough for a handful of other users to confirm.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by michealpwalls on Wednesday March 26 2014, @11:27AM

    by michealpwalls (3920) on Wednesday March 26 2014, @11:27AM (#21553) Homepage

    No, this is completely true

    Starting out my 2nd semester in college I got a new ASUS laptop (K75DE) with Windows 8 on it. Naturally, the first thing I did was disable Secure Boot, shrink the disk and started to install Gentoo..

    Not long afterwards, when booting Windows 8 the Win8 boot loader put "Detecting your PC for errors", or something along those lines. About 15 - 20 seconds later it changed to "Attempting to Repair errors". After 2 minutes, it failed to "repair" the errors and rebooted... What it did was delete every ext3 partition, removed grub and re-enabled SecureBoot.

    The only way forward was completely removing Win8 and replacing it with win7. Haven't had a problem since.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @10:12PM (#21872)

      "Detecting your PC for errors"

      This sure does sound like the "unsigned code" thing to me.
      I wonder if those folks who *aren't* having problems are running a distro that includes the mjg59 shim. [google.com]

      -- gewg_