Boot-Start Driver Initialization Policy

This policy setting allows you to specify which boot-start drivers are initialized based on a classification determined by an Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver. The Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver can return the following classifications for each boot-start driver:
- Good: The driver has been signed and has not been tampered with.
- Bad: The driver has been identified as malware. It is recommended that you do not allow known bad drivers to be initialized.
- Bad, but required for boot: The driver has been identified as malware, but the computer cannot successfully boot without loading this driver.
- Unknown: This driver has not been attested to by your malware detection application and has not been classified by the Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver.

If you enable this policy setting you will be able to choose which boot-start drivers to initialize the next time the computer is started.

If you disable or do not configure this policy setting, the boot start drivers determined to be Good, Unknown or Bad but Boot Critical are initialized and the initialization of drivers determined to be Bad is skipped.

If your malware detection application does not include an Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver or if your Early Launch Antimalware boot-start driver has been disabled, this setting has no effect and all boot-start drivers are initialized.

Supported on: At least Windows Server 2012, Windows 8 or Windows RT

Registry HiveHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Registry PathSystem\CurrentControlSet\Policies\EarlyLaunch
Value NameDriverLoadPolicy
Value TypeREG_DWORD
Enabled Value1
Disabled Value0

Choose the boot-start drivers that can be initialized:


  1. Good only
    Registry HiveHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    Registry PathSystem\CurrentControlSet\Policies\EarlyLaunch
    Value NameDriverLoadPolicy
    Value TypeREG_DWORD
    Value8
  2. Good and unknown
    Registry HiveHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    Registry PathSystem\CurrentControlSet\Policies\EarlyLaunch
    Value NameDriverLoadPolicy
    Value TypeREG_DWORD
    Value1
  3. Good, unknown and bad but critical
    Registry HiveHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    Registry PathSystem\CurrentControlSet\Policies\EarlyLaunch
    Value NameDriverLoadPolicy
    Value TypeREG_DWORD
    Value3
  4. All
    Registry HiveHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    Registry PathSystem\CurrentControlSet\Policies\EarlyLaunch
    Value NameDriverLoadPolicy
    Value TypeREG_DWORD
    Value7


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