John O’Brien’s PC can’t boot from a USB drive. Every PC needs a way to boot into something other than the installed operating system. Removable boot media allows you to repair your Windows ...

We all need to start from scratch sometimes and if you're building a new PC, chances are you'll need to learn how to make a bootable USB drive. This will enable you to boot your PC directly from a USB ...

Rufus is a free, portable utility that creates bootable USB flash drives from ISO files. As of 2026, the latest version is Rufus 4.13 — and it’s faster and more capable than ever, with built-in ...

When installing a fresh copy of Windows 10, you typically use a USB flash drive to launch the "Windows Setup" wizard to continue with the installation process. However, on a device that has a Unified ...

If your Chromebook does not boot into the operating system anymore, you can create a recovery USB flash drive and use it to reinstall a copy of Chrome OS on your computer. Google provides a tool ...

The process of downloading and installing a fresh copy of Windows 10 is pretty straightforward. But did you know that you also can run Windows right from a USB flash drive? Now it does sound like a ...

As someone who extensively writes about all things Windows, I find myself installing the Windows operating system quite often. Most of the time, these installations are geared toward setting up ...

This simple USB setup can rescue almost any PC ...

A bootable Mac OS X thumb drive comes in handy when you need to troubleshoot OS issues for yourself, your family, or your friends. It’s also extremely useful for keeping your basic setup consistent ...

A friend of mine asked me to fix his USB flash drive. It's an HP 4GB drive. My notebook is running Windows 7 64-bit. When I connected the drive to my computer, Windows installed the drivers but it ...

Flash drives are convenient for making backups of files as well as copying data from one computer to another. These small memory devices are portable and only require ...

After all, flash sticks aren't the most reliable boot drives ...