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Secure Boot

Secure Boot After a Ventoy Update Enrol the Key Again

Your updated drive booted fine at home, but the office PC now shows a blue 'Security Violation' screen. Nothing is broken - the PC is simply asking you to renew its trust. Here is why, and the exact enrolment steps.

By Technical AnshuVentoy USB Guide5 minute read
Watch the full video - the update runs live on a pen drive full of ISO files, and nothing gets formatted

This is the Ventoy update side-effect that surprises people most, because it appears on a different machine than the one where you updated. Secure Boot trust is stored per PC, and an update can change the boot files enough that a PC wants the key enrolled again. The screen looks like a security incident; it is actually a routine introduction being repeated. Here is how to read it, and how to answer it.

The blue screen a PC may show once after a big update
Verification failed: (0x1A) Security Violation
What it meansSecure Boot does not recognise the new boot files yet
What it does NOT meanYour drive is broken or your ISOs are gone
The fixOK - Enroll key from disk - one time per PC
The MokManager screen - alarming colour, two-minute fix, and it only appears once per machine
1

Why This Screen Exists at All

Secure Boot only runs boot files that the PC has been told to trust. Ventoy's way of earning that trust is enrolment: the first time a Secure Boot PC meets your drive, you use the blue MokManager screen to enrol Ventoy's key from the drive itself, and from then on that PC trusts the drive. Here is the honest part most guides skip: an update replaces the boot files. After a small update, the already-enrolled trust usually still fits and nothing changes. After a large jump in versions - it is documented for drives updating from releases older than 1.1.14 - the boot files differ enough that each Secure Boot PC asks for the enrolment once more. It is a five-minute-per-machine chore, not a failure.

2

Re-Enrolling, Step by Step

  1. Boot the PC from the Ventoy drive. On the blue screen, press OK to enter MokManager
  2. Choose Enroll key from disk
  3. Navigate to the small VTOYEFI partition and select the file ENROLL_THIS_KEY_IN_MOKMANAGER.cer
  4. Confirm the enrolment when asked, then choose Continue boot or reboot
  5. The Ventoy menu now appears, and this PC will not ask again for this drive's current boot files

Plan for it: if you maintain several PCs, expect to do this once at each machine after a big version jump. Sitting at the machine is required - there is no honest remote shortcut for firmware trust screens.

3

What Not to Do

Do not respond to this screen by turning Secure Boot off permanently across all your PCs, and do not reformat the drive - neither is needed, and your ISOs were never involved. If one specific office PC is managed by IT policy, enrolment may be blocked there on purpose; that is the policy working as designed, and the answer is to talk to whoever manages that machine, not to defeat the setting. And if the blue screen never appears and the firmware simply refuses the drive, that machine may need the firmware option to allow third-party UEFI certificates, per Ventoy's documentation - again a per-machine setting, changed once, with the owner's knowledge.

Watch Full Video

The video series shows this blue screen being answered live - enrolment looks dramatic and takes about two minutes.

Watch Full Video
Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my PC show a security violation screen after I updated Ventoy?

Because the update replaced the boot files, and Secure Boot only trusts boot files it has been introduced to. After a large version jump the PC asks you to enrol Ventoy's key once more through the blue MokManager screen. Your ISO files are not involved at all.

How do I enrol the Ventoy key again?

On the blue screen choose OK, then Enroll key from disk, select the VTOYEFI partition and the file ENROLL_THIS_KEY_IN_MOKMANAGER.cer, confirm, and continue booting. The PC remembers it, so this is a one-time step per machine.

Should I just turn Secure Boot off instead?

That works as a temporary fallback on your own machine, but enrolling the key is the better answer - it takes two minutes, keeps the protection Secure Boot exists to give, and only needs doing once per PC. On a machine managed by someone else's IT policy, do not change firmware security settings without their agreement.

This guide is based on the Update Ventoy Without Formatting Pendrive video by Technical Anshu - Stuck on a step? Ask in the video comments, help is always there.