Microsoft has warned Windows users that their PCs may restart more than once during future system updates, but there’s no need to panic. The tech giant clarified late last week that a series of necessary Secure Boot certificate refreshes are rolling out to consumer and business devices. The standard monthly updates usually only require a single reboot, so the appearance of two or more restarts in a row has scared some users into thinking their operating systems are caught in a failing boot loop.
Fortunately, this behaviour is fully intentional and works as intended. Those extra reboots are needed to safely install the Secure Boot 2023 certificates that will replace aging security keys from 2011, which will expire in June. This important security transition guarantees devices will still be able to prevent unauthorized malicious software from loading during the startup process. Most modern machines with current firmware will cope with the additional reboots without any problem, but Microsoft warns that some older, unsupported hardware may not update if the device maker has stopped supplying the necessary BIOS updates. If you want to verify that your machines have the new security credentials applied successfully, you can easily verify this using the Device Security tab in the Windows Security app. A green check mark indicates that your machine is fully up to date and secured.
