Windows 7 Disable Driver Enforcement

Posted on 8/27/2019admin

Enable / Disable Driver Signature Enforcement in Windows 7 Go to Start All Programs Accessories and Right-Click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator. Click Yes when prompted. Type bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING OFF and hit enter. Restart your computer. Press the 7 keyboard key to activate the “ Disable driver signature enforcement ” option. Once done, your PC will reboot with driver signature enforcement disabled, and you’ll be able to install. Disabling Driver Signature Enforcement: Go to Start All Programs Accessories and Right-Click on Command Prompt and select Run As Administrator. Click Yes when prompted. Type bcdedit -set TESTSIGNING ON and hit enter. Restart your Computer; NOTE: You can also do this through F8 when booting your computer. Enabling Driver Signature Enforcement.

Win 7 Disable Driver Signature Enforcement
Windows 7 Disable Driver Signature Enforcement Registry
Windows 7 Disable Driver Enforcement
Windows 7 Disable Driver Signature Enforcement
Disable Driver Enforcement Windows 10

One of the common problems that people face when using a 64-bit Windows is loading unsigned drivers. This is by design to provide a more restrictive environment to protect Windows from easily being infected by rootkits, a type of malware that uses a driver for low level hooking. It is also very difficult for software that belongs to a high risk category to obtain a digital certificate and one example is the Elite Keylogger where it took them years to get their driver signed.

This becomes a problem when using some legitimate software and you’re unable to load an older program such as PeerGuardian with the error message “Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file” because of an unsigned driver. We know that PeerGuardian has been superseded by a program called PeerBlock which doesn’t have these issues, but it’s just being used as an example to demonstrate the problem.

How to Disable Driver Signature Enforcement in Windows 10/8/7 64-Bit. Click the Restart button on the Startup Settings screen to reboot your computer again. After restart in Startup Settings windows, press the F7 key on your keyboard to select “ Disable driver signature enforcement “. Your PC will then reboot. In fact, Safe Mode is one of the options, but in this case, the one you're looking for is a new option near the bottom called Disable Driver Signature Enforcement Use the arrow keys to highlight it and then press the ENTER key. Windows will load like normal, but now it won't require Microsoft approved drivers. How to Enable/Disable Driver Signature Enforcement in Windows 7. Open up a command prompt with administrator privilages, either right click and Run as Administrator, or hit the Windows Key type in cmd and then hit CTRL+Shift+Enter. This entry was posted in Windows and tagged command, driver signature enforcement, Windows, windows 7 by admin. Turn Off Driver Signing Enforcement in Windows 7 Saturday, January 9th, 2010 ( 16 comments ) So here's the deal (my theory anyway); Microsoft is trying to make their system more stable and secure, but to do that, they have to have some standards of quality for drivers used on the system.

It appears the obtaining a certificate to perform driver signing costs hundreds of dollars per year and not every software developer can afford that kind of money especially when their software is freeware or open source. Fortunately, there are ways to force the unsigned drivers to load in 64-bit (x64) versions of Windows 7, 8 and Vista.

There are some tutorials suggesting that typing this command:

bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

into command prompt will do the job, but it doesn’t work on Windows 7 x64. It is believed this command was rendered useless with the release of Vista x64 SP1 and definitely doesn’t work on Windows 7 or 8. There was also a number of separate security patches on Vista which caused the command to not work. The Windows boot manager editor EasyBCD has an option which uses a command equivalent to DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS, but as this is no longer useful, we would recommend you ignore this option in EasyBCD.

There are still a few working ways to load unsigned drivers though…

Option 1

This first method is to continuously press F8 when Windows is booting up until you get the Advanced Boot Options menu, then select “Disable Driver Signature Enforcement”.

The problem about this method is you have to do that every time you boot up Windows and if you forget to select this option, you won’t get to load the unsigned drivers and the software that needs the driver won’t work.

Win 7 Disable Driver Signature Enforcement

Option 2

This method is to use ReadyDriver Plus, an enhanced version of the original ReadyDriver program. It does the same thing as the first method by selecting the Disable Driver Signature Enforcement option in Advanced Boot Options, but does it automatically as if you are doing it yourself.

There are modifications made to the Vista/7 Bootloader to load ReadyDriverPlus and you don’t have to touch the keys during boot. ReadyDriverPlus launches itself from the menu and then makes the appropriate selection to disable Driver Enforcement, based on what you choose to install. This tool works great on Windows 7 x64.

Next we’ll show you how to load Windows in Test Mode allowing for unsigned drivers to be enabled.

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Very good article. Thanks for sharing it.

Regarding Option 3, how can I identify the driver file? I’m trying to sign an Intel video driver and when I open up the driver details in Device Manager, there are a bunch of different files, but there’s one C:WindowsSystem32DRIVERSigdkmd64.sys. Is that the file? (System is Windows 7 Professional x64)

John1 year ago

Thanks Raymond, Method 1 worked and has ended hours of pain. Thank God for you and the many helpful people out there on the internet.

This is one thing I hate about Windows. They force you to reboot the computer for something as trivial as this. Now I have to wait 20 mins for my PC to boot. :/

DubbaThony2 years ago

wow, thats insane time!
Im 100% sure that you can optimize this load time.
my windows 7 boots in 8-9 seconds from the end of POST to seeing desktop

Thank you so much. I spent hours searching for Coby Netbook drivers from 2010. Coby has no official website and the Network drivers available are only from third party websites. After Disabling Driver Enforcement I was finally capable of installing the network driver. All seems to be running fine. :)

Pat3 years ago

DSEO worked fine for me today on 64-bit Windows 7 getting drivers for my old pentium 4 system. I still got warnings but not the refusal or failure to display the drivers. Thanks! It was the first time I have tried 64-bit and the signature enforcement thing came as a bit of a shock!
(As did the 400 updates my old win 7 DVD install required!)

Check if you have BitLocker enabled by your IT group. If so, the bcdedit will lock you out of your machine until you type in the Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption Recovery Key.

I’m currently in that situation. Just trying to load a driver for a board I designed several years ago, they upgrade our machines and now I can’t do my job. Shoulda kept my XP machine. :)

Filbieri6 years ago

Hello, this would had been a solution to install unsigned audio and Ethernet drivers on a laptop (dell latitude d600) if my system weren’t a windows 7 ultimate 32bit. Please tell me if this solution can be apply in this case. Thank you in advance for any advice you can give.
Filbieri

First of all thanks raymond for showing me a bunch of methods i was unaware of.
For those who will need to do this on a regular basis or are simply too lazy :D ive just made 6th option: a simple batch file which will “automate” the process somewhat.
* make a new text document by clicking your desktop > New > Text Document
* Press enter twice
* Now that the document is opened in notepad copy paste the text at the bottom of this post in it (you could remove the line called “pause” if you dont want a confirmation, then the program will do what you’ve asked and automatically close itself.
* Save your document and call it anything you like.
* Change the file extension from .txt to .bat (note: if you cant change or see the file extension this means that “Hide extension for known file types” is checked under Folder Options).
* Its ready to use! (Run with Admin privilege, not sure whetever it is necessary to turn UAC (User Account Control) off first. Correct me if im wrong here!

!!Note!!
Dont forget changes are active after rebooting windows and more importantly!!! Like JSSmith said when you are done doing whatever it is you need change the setting back to default because theres a good reason for windows not allowing unsigned drivers!!! Better be safe then sorry right :)

@echo off
echo 1=Allow the installation of unsigned drivers
echo 2=Block the installation of unsigned drivers (windows 7 Default)
echo X=Exit
choice /C:12X

if errorlevel 3 goto End
if errorlevel 2 goto Block
if errorlevel 1 goto Allow

:Allow
bcdedit /set nointegritychecks OFF
Echo Installation of unsigned drivers is now ALLOWED!
goto end

:Block
bcdedit /set nointegritychecks ON
Echo Installation of unsigned drivers is now BLOCKED!

:end
pause
cls

TnO-1875 years ago

Forgot to mention that this works on Windows 7 x64.

To run this procedure I must disable “secure boot” in the UEFI at start up of the PC desktop in Windows8. Can this be done without any harm??
Thanks?
Chris

paolo4 years ago

I’m sorry but I have to insert in the text file from:
——
@echo off
echo 1=Allow….

…pause
cls
——

and I did not understand the difference between keeping or delete the line called “pause”:
the program runs as ReadyDriver Plus during boot?

I would like to try your solution but I do not understand what are the differences with ReadyDriver Plus, I’m sorry.

thanks a lot

Observation – Please… so Microsoft’s Intentions – to protect us from countless risks, locks us down so tightly, that for those of us with needs for (1) or at most a few “unsigned drivers”, forces us to unprotect our whole system (100%) 24/7, in order to maintain certain functionality… KaVoom’s KVM utility requires “Enforcement” turned OFF at every bootup cycle.

Thanks Microsoft (Idiots)… rather than providing for a case-by-case exception (providing 99+% Protection), they push us into an “all or nothing” solution. My first 20 years in technology I loved and believed in Microsoft – My last 10 years, I have grown to despise them and dozens of their product and business decisions… May their market share go to hell.

Is there no solution that handles “unsigned drivers” on a case-by-case basis ???

Joshua6 years ago

Actually the first option where you enter “bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS” into the command prompt works on windows 8. Worked for me anyway. Just make sure your running it as administrator

F8 trick worked! Thanks buddy

Tim10 years ago

The number of times this blog’s solved something for me…

I’ve had to get a Netcomm AM5066 (Rave III) USB dialup modem working on a customer’s laptop running Windows 7 64bit. Netcomm have 64bit drivers for XP, 32bit for Vista and list nothing at all for W7. I’ve managed to get the XP64 drivers working in W7 by disabling driver signing.

I tried the NGOHQ program first, and that seemed to work okay. 2 weeks later my customer brought it back, and it’d stopped working; I couldn’t get it to accept the drivers again. Not sure what happened.

Then luckily found this post. I strongly recommend ReadyDriver Plus over DSEO; it’s a far simpler solution and a lot easier to set up and leave. It pretends to be a human pressing the buttons to get to the F8 boot menu and then pick the “disable driver signing” option.

Works for me!

I use ReadyDriver Plus and it works fine for me! Thanks Tamagotchi game online free.

atterno10 years ago

Great find Raymond.As a person who deals with all flavors of OS in the market, I know what a pain it is to get drivers installed in 64 bit versions. Hats off to you.

Very nice tutorial, this is why I love your blog.

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pceasies10 years ago

I’ve been using DSEO without many problems.

Thanks for the tutorial.

Active2 years, 2 months ago

I want to boot windows 7 every time with 'disable driver signature enforcement'. Because every time I didn't do so, my WLAN adapter 'Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377' didn't work.

I tried bcdedit.exe hacks but it didn't work, the only way to get my wifi working is to press F8 and choose 'disable driver signature enforcement'

So, is there any hack or workaround to make it the default without pressing F8?

user2132188

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1 Answer

There are a couple of ways to do that:

Import certificates prior to install

Follow these steps:

install the software once manually by confirming that the unsigned drivers shall be used
go to %windir%inf and search for the latest OEM??.INF file; open it (notepad) and verify by its contents that this is the driver you wish to install automatically next time
go to %windir%system32catroot{any ID}OEM??.CAT (<- same number as in step 2); right click on this file, select properties, go to 'Digital Signatures' tab, mark the certificate, click on details
on the next window click 'Show Certificate'
on the next window open the 'Details' tab and click 'Save to File..'
collect this/all certificates
deploy these certificates 7.1 either in a batch /cmd script using 'certutil.exe -f -addstore 'TrustedPublisher' 'MYFILE.cer' prior to setup 7.2 or by Group Policies (computer Policies Windows Security Public Key Policies add your files here )
run your setup just the way you wanted

Using Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider
- Download the application from the Softpedia link.
- Right click on it and choose 'Run as administrator'. Inside its main menu, press on the “Enable Test Mode” button and follow the instructions on the screen. This will enable TESTSIGNING mode, which allows unverified system files to be loaded.
- Now all you have to do is to add the unverified signature to the required system files. To do so press on the “Sign a System File” button from the main menu, and enter specific filename including full path. For example: if ATITool64.sys from C:WindowsSystem32drivers refuses to load due to driver signature enforcement, you should type: C:WindowsSystem32driversATITool64.sys, and if you would like to sign more than a single file, just repeat this procedure until you’re done, and finally reboot.
- After you enabled Test Mode and added signatures to the required system files, they should bypass Windows’s driver signature enforcement and load without any issues. However, if for some reason you are interested to revert it, you can re-launch the application, choose “Disable Test Mode” from the main menu, and reboot.

Windows 7 Disable Driver Signature Enforcement Registry

Note: DSEO requires administrative privileges (Run as administrator).

Acknowledgements

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