Potential Workaround for older Aspire machines for the Microsoft Windows 11 Secure Boot Certificate Problem
Possible Fix/Work around for Secure Boot Certificate ..for the Acer Aspire TC-780
I have an Acer TC-780 running the original BIOS version R01-A0. This machine was purchased in 2016. I forced it to update to Windows 11 Home and it runs reasonably well. Now the MS Windows Security App within Device Security reports that secure boot is on, but new certificates can not be installed automatically.
Good News: I have gone through a process within the BIOS to Restore the Secure Boot Factory Keys. After I did this, the next windows restart and update successfully loaded an update named "Secure Boot Allowed Signature Database (DB) Update". I also used the Power-shell command to Get-UEFISecurBoot Certs and it returns "True" which seems to confirm that the Windows UEFI CA 2023 certificate is physically written into NVRAM cache.
Bad News: Because Windows sees my older 7th gen machine that Acer has officially designated end of life, Windows Security continues to say my machine cannot receive future secure boot certificates. The Windows Security App apparently doesn't actually check the live motherboard keys, but instead only looks at the motherboard board model number and its BIOS creation date of 2016 -- and automatically lists the machine secure boot certificates as not able to be automatically updated.
If anyone would like the specific steps I took or more info, please ask. I'm assuming the basic problem is "solved" even though MS Security still gives the warning. Also I assume given the age of the machine there will be no fixes from Acer on this old machine. And if further/future problems occur, I may just have to turn off Secure Boot in the BIOS and hope the machine will continue to run future versions of Window 11.
Posted Jul 10, 2026, 7:33 PM UTC