USB Image failed to Verify with "Access Denied"

balenaEtcher
1

Hello!

I used your free Etcher Utility (Thanks!) to create a bootable USB drive so I could test out a Linux OS. When I used the UEFI restart utility, I got the error message shown in the title of my post. This appears to be a Secure Boot problem but I am leery of disabling the Secure Boot option in my BIOS. Is this a problem with the image I created or is it a MS Windows problem?

What do you recommend I try?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Tom

2

Hi Tom, welcome to the Forums. That is actually a PC issue more than even a Windows issue (or more specifically, the firmware that controls the boot process, which Windows then reads to ensure the hardware hasn’t been tampered with). I suspect the USB stick that you flashed is just fine, and would work properly to boot up the Linux OS that you flashed to it. I definitely understand your hesitation to disable Secure Boot, but, that is likely the only way your machine will boot something other than the Windows install that it came with.

Alternatively, if you happen to have a spare / old PC laying around, you could always test on that. Hope that helps, thanks!

4

Thanks for the quick response!..:slight_smile: I am not familiar with what Secure boot does. If I disable it, does it leave me vulnerable to attacks or is this just a IT management tool?

Tom

6

Hi Tim, sorry for the very delayed reply here, I never got a ping that you had replied, odd. It is primarily used in IT Management settings as you mentioned, as well as ensures that malware can’t get introduced by booting random, unknown images from the internet, ensure your hardware hasn’t been compromised, and more…Of course, you fully intend to boot an image downloaded from the internet (Linux), so it’s up to you to consider the inherit risk, but that is why Secure Boot exists, to make you think twice about it. Hope that helps explain it a bit. Thanks!

8

Thanks for getting back to me. I disabled secureboot and fastboot but I still had troubles getting the USB drive to work. Fortunately, I have another computer to do my testing on and I was able to boot from my USB on that computer with no problems.

Thanks again!

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