ASUS Issues Support Workaround for Non-booting Windows 7 Computers Affected by KB3133977

In another bizarre twist to the ongoing story of troublesome updates from Microsoft, KB3133977 was recently reclassified from Optional to Recommended. That doesn’t so bad, does it? Well, those Windows 7 users with ASUS motherboards in the PC case would disagree. By changing the classification, Microsoft made many assume the update needed to be installed.

So, they did.

What ensued has been labeled by some as a Windows 7 mass extinction event.

To protect computers against malware attacks, ASUS enables Secure Boot by default on its motherboards. However, by installing KB3133977, Windows 7 no longer supports Secure Boot. That’s right. Microsoft ended support for Secure Boot for Windows 7 with an update – an update that was classified as optional for this very reason. Who made the decision to change the classification to recommended so that it would install automatically is unclear, however, many are suggesting it’s just part of a conspiracy to get Windows 7 users to move to Windows 10 sooner.

On top of this snafu, another recent update (KB3035583) disables Windows 10 upgrade blocking. Administrators who spent cycles blocking the Windows 10 upgrade rolled into work to find the mechanisms Microsoft supplied were no longer working. End users were once again being prompted to upgrade to Windows 10.

Conspiracy? Or just poor quality control?

ASUS has now provided a fix which involves changing UEFI Secure Boot settings in the motherboard BIOS to allow the system to boot into the operating system successfully.

The walkthrough for the workaround is here: http://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1016356/